Gingerbread Cupcakes – a Cupcake a Day in May

Its Monday – Day 18 of Cupcake a Day May, proudly brought to you by these warmly spiced Gingerbread Cupcakes.

One of my favourite cakes to make as a teenager was the Australian Women’s Weekly Cinnamon Ginger Cake with Caramel frosting. It had this wonderful crumb which was kind of chewy yet light, and deliciously spicy. So when the time to make a gingerbread cupcake came round, that was the recipe that I looked to first! It’s slightly adapted to make the quantities work for cupcakes.

I’ve seen gingerbread cupcakes on Pinterest (of course) and they were decorated with sweet little gingerbread cookie trees and stars, piped with royal icing. The thing is, this being Cupcake a Day May, making gingerbread cookies to top these cupcakes was a little bit too much to ask – not least because I am making half-batches of cakes generally – to save cost and prevent myself (and my tasters) from gaining too much weight! So unfortunately, these cupcakes had to be decorated with little translucent slices of “naked” crystallised ginger (a clever product from Buderim Ginger which has no sugar crystals on the outside).

Come Christmas though, when I have some gingerbread dough kicking around, I’ll definitely be decorating these cupcakes up with trees, stars, and maybe even tiny little gingerbread houses!

The frosting on these cupcakes is spiced exactly the same as my favourite gingerbread – butter, honey, golden syrup, ginger, cinnamon and cloves. It’s just right! The salt in the recipe really brings out the perfect roundness of the flavour.

Gingerbread Cupcakes

Ginger Cinnamon Cupcakes

ingredients

1/3 cup (80g) sugar
100g butter
2/3 cup (230g) golden syrup
1 egg
1 1/2 cups (220g) flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
2/3 cup (165mL) hot water

mixing

Line a 12 hole muffin pan with cupcake cases, spray with non-stick spray.

Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the golden syrup, followed by the egg. Sift the flour, spices and baking soda together, and mix these into the batter. Finally, add the hot water, and beat until smooth.

Spoon the mixture into the cupcake cases, and bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 25 minutes or until a skewer inserted into a cupcake comes out clean. Let cool on a wire rack.

Load the frosting into a piping bag fitted with a star tip and pipe swirls over cold cupcakes. Decorate the top of the cupcakes with fine slivers of crystallised ginger.  I also sprinkled some little edible gold stars over the top for a bit of a Christmassy feel.

Gingerbread Frosting

ingredients

250g unsalted butter
2 tbsp honey
2 tbsp golden syrup
1 cup icing sugar
4 tsp ground ginger
4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp salt

a few pieces of crystallised ginger, to decorate

mixing

Beat the butter until light and creamy. And then the honey and golden syrup and and beat until combined. Sift over the icing sugar, spices and salt and beat until very light and fluffy.

I hope you love these cupcakes as much as I and my taste testers do!

Enjoy!xxx