Christmas Gingerbread Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting and Gingerbread Men Toppers

The final cupcakes I made for the Christmas stall were gingerbread flavour.  

There's just something about gingerbread, and to me you can't do Christmas baking without it featuring! 

The simplicity of the cream cheese frosting is the perfect combo with the spiciness of the cupcake, and what makes them super cute is the mini homemade gingerbread man on top.

Gingerbread Cupcakes:

Makes 12 regular and 12 mini

From: Cupcake Creations

1 cup self raising flour

1 cup plain flour

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

1 cup dark brown sugar

2 eggs

180g unsalted butter, softened

1/2 cup semi-skimmed milk

4 tbsp golden syrup 

Preheat oven to 170 degrees C.

Sift flour, bicarbonate of soda, ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg into the bowl of a free standing mixer.

Add the remaining ingredients.

Beat in mixer until combined and lighter in colour (approx. 2 mins).

Divide mixture between cases.

Bake for 30 minutes.

Leave to cool in pans for 10 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack.

Cream Cheese Frosting:

Makes enough to frost above

From: The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook

300g icing sugar

50g unsalted butter, at room temperature

125 cream cheese, cold

Beat the icing sugar and butter together in a freestanding electric mixer with a paddle attachment on medium slow speed until the mixture comes together and is well mixed.

Add the cream cheese in one go and beat until it is completely incorporated.

Turn the mixer up to medium-high speed.

Continue beating until the frosting is light and fluffy, at least 5 minutes.

Do not overbeat, as it can quickly become runny.

Gingerbread Men Cookies:

Makes approx. 30-40 cookies depending on size or 12 large size gingerbread men

From: Net Mums

350g plain flour

1 1/2 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

100g unsalted butter

175g soft light brown sugar

1 egg

4 tbsp golden syrup

Sift the flour, ginger and bicarbonate of soda into a bowl.

Rub in the butter (or if you're lazy like me your KitchenAid can do this job pretty well too).

Add sugar and stir in the syrup and egg to make a firm dough.

Flour your work surface generously and flour the rolling pin, roll out to 5mm thick.

Flour your cookie cutter and cut out the men.

Space the cookies out on your baking sheet as they will spread out.

Bake at 190 degrees C for 10-15 minutes (Cut the baking time in half if you are making the mini size gingerbread men for cupcake toppers). 

Leave to firm up on the baking tray for 5 minutes and then transfer them to a wire track to cool.

Once I had made enough mini gingerbread men for the cupcakes, I used the rest of the dough to make different festive shaped cookies.  I whipped up a batch of very standard icing = icing sugar and water, and then piped an outline on the cookies, flooded the middle and decorated them with a variety of sprinkles.

For the mini versions of the cupcake I topped them with gingerbread men sprinkles which were very cute too as unfortunately they don't make a gingerbread man size cutter small enough to fit on top of a mini cupcake! I also used my gingerbread men cupcake cases, and you may just be able to see them peeking through if you look extra close in this pic! 

Each egg box of mini's contained the three other festive flavours too: Candy Cane Red Velvet, Peanut Butter Brownie and Hot Chocolate.