Gingerbread Christmas Cupcakes

I did some baking today and wanted to share these really delicious and quite unusual cupcakes I made with you. They really do taste like you're eating a gingerbread man in the form of a cupcake, and topped with delicious caramel cream cheese icing, they are just so good. 

I got the recipe from Tanya Burr, and really like it because the cake batter contains quite a bit of buttermilk, which always makes cakes really moist and light. So let me give you the recipe and show you some pictures of the end result :D

The ingredients you'll need are:
* 150ml milk
* 3 tablespoons treacle/molasses
* 375g light brown sugar
* 385g cake flour
* 3 teaspoons baking powder
* 1,5 teaspoons bicarb/baking soda
* 1,5 teaspoons cinnamon
* 1,5 teaspoons ground ginger
* 225ml oil
* 300ml buttermilk
* 1,5 teaspoons vanilla essence
* 3 eggs

and then for the icing you'll need
* 200g of caramel (this can be bought salted caramel, a caramel ice-cream type sauce or if you're feeling adventurous, a homemade caramel, whatever you want)
* 150g butter
* 500g icing sugar
* 200g cream cheese (plain) 
* 2 teaspoons vanilla essence

Start by preheating the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
In a pot on the stove/hot, on medium heat, add the milk and treacle and lightly stir until the treacle is dissolved in the milk, then turn off the heat. 
It is super super simple from here on in that all you do is basically mix the dry and wet ingredients separately then added them. 
So in one large bowl, sieve in the flour, then add the sugar, baking powder, bicarb and spices and mix. 
In a separate, medium sized bowl, add the oil, buttermilk, eggs and vanilla essence and mix. Now add the treacle milk mixture to the rest of the wet ingredients and whisk (a hand whisk is perfect, no need to do so electrically) until they are pretty much combined. 
Now, while stirring, add the wet ingredients to the dry to form your batter. 
Don't worry if the batter seems super wet and runny, it is meant to be like that. 
Now all you need to do is spoon the mixture into cupcake cases and pop it in the oven for about 20 minutes (but obviously keep and eye on them as this will depend on your oven). Check that they're done by sticking a knife or skewer into the centre and checking it comes out clean without any raw batter on it. 
If you don't want cupcakes, you can always pour the mixture into a cake tin and cook for 40 minutes rather. 

While the cupcakes cook, you can get on with the icing. Again, it's pretty much case of just adding everything. Make sure to sieve you icing sugar, or else it leaves clumps in the icing. And also mush up your cream cheese in a separate bowl before adding it so it is really smooth. Then just add it all together. Because of the cream cheese it is a relatively runny frosting, but if you want, you can thicken it up with a bit more icing sugar. 

When the cakes are done, let them cool entirely (this is the point my impatient is at a high, so I usually pop them in the freezer for 10 minutes to cool, because it is important they are not at all warm). Now you can ice them however you want- I put the icing into a piping bag and just did a little spiral on top of each one. 

You can decorate them however, if at all, depending on what you want. To make these even more christmassy, I just used a ready-to-roll red fondant, rolled it out and cut out a bunch of little stars to put on top of each one. 

This recipe makes a lot of cupcakes, like probably about 36, so you can definitely half it if you don't want so many!

And that's it! Do make these, they are really delicious, and like I said earlier, they are quite an unusual thing, like not many people make them, but because of the gingerbread-y ingredients, they feel very familiar and really are super yummy. Happy baking!