The festive baking continues....Gingerbread Man Cupcakes

So I now realise the importance of always listing your recipes along with your blog posts! Last Christmas I made some delicious Gingerbread Man Cupcakes with a random recipe I had found off google.  I have it written down but it is currently in England somewhere in my parents attic! There was no way I was going to remember which site it came from so this time round I went with a different one and it wasn't quite as delicious...still good, but if I'd have posted that recipe how much easier things would have been! 

We began by making gingerbread cookies to be the toppers for our cupcakes.  I had said let's make the cookies first and then while the cupcakes are cooking we can decorate the cookies...but no, our recipe produced an enormous amount of dough that seemed to be everlasting so for 4 hours straight on Tuesday night we made cookies...batch after batch after batch!

Then came the decorating!!! 

Mara was taking it very seriously! 

This was my first ever time 'flooding' a cookie, I was quite nervous but was pleased with how easy it turned out to be!

We had quite alot of Christmas sprinkles to use, and I was really happy with this cute little Christmas tree cutter I ordered off a baking website in England that Mara brought over for me.

Mara decorated her Christmas tree with individual green sprinkles around the edge which I thought was a good effect:

These were our cute teeny Gingerbread Men for our toppers, you might not be able to tell but the one on the left has a little red heart too - a tip we picked up from all The Martha Stewart Show's we have been watching on American T.V! 

Since we had so much cookie dough left over, we made quite alot of stars too! and went to town on the decorating, I love the one with the Candy Cane Kisses on top! 

At about 1am we decided to call it a night on the baking front...so we resumed the following morning to make the cupcakes and finish our idea! 

The batter of the recipe we used produced was very light and fluffy.

While they were in the oven, I whipped up my cream cheese frosting with some trepidation.  The last 4 times I have made cream cheese frosting out here it has been a flop, literally.  I think because of the humidity and because the butter is always so soft to begin with, you take it out the fridge for like 10 minutes to soften and it's practically liquid by the time you're ready to put it in! 

Well...this is my super happy face! because hurrah! making cream cheese frosting in Turks and Caicos finally worked for me! The temperature has cooled down alot since we first arrived and so I wonder if that helped things! I'm pretty sure it was the best batch of cream cheese frosting I've made...ever! The American butter here is not as yellow as our butter in England so it made the frosting lovely and white and very glossy too! Here is the recipe I followed for the frosting:

Cream Cheese Frosting:

300g icing sugar
50g unsalted butter
125g cream cheese

1. Beat the butter and sugar together in an electric mixer on low speed
2. Beat the cream cheese in on medium-high speed, turn up and beat until the frosting is fluffy (be sure not to overbeat, as cream cheese will go runny).

I got to work piping, you can't really see but the mini cupcakes are even in gingerbread man cases...I ordered them from Wilton but they aren't greaseproof and are not the best cases I've ever used, but they look fun! 

Hmm look at all the frosting! and check the Christmas cupcake wrapping paper in the background! All of my presents under the tree are currently wrapped in that...fun stuff!

Here are the finished cupcakes, I was so pleased with the way they turned out! 

Gingerbread Cupcakes:

Makes 12 cupcakes

1/2 cup self raising flour

1/2 cup plain flour

1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 egg

90g unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/4 cup milk

2 tbsp golden syrup

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees c.

Sieve the flours, soda, ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg into a large bowl.  Add the remaining ingredients. Using an electric mixer, beat for 2 minutes (until mixture has lightened in colour) and all ingredients are combined.

Divide the mixture evenly between cases and bake for 30 minutes.