cupcakes: What you've always wanted | pretty paper. true stories. {and scrapbooking classes with cupcakes.}

So yes, cupcakes that I worry could result in a ‘cease & desist’ email, but I’ve done a bit of searching and I don’t think Starbucks have actually registered a trademark for the Gingerbread Latte, so hopefully I shall be fine.

In all seriousness, this is the thought process behind this cupcake:
1. Gingerbread = yum.
2. Coffee = yum.
3. If it works in a drink, surely it can work in a cupcake.

And all I know is this: normally, our tray of cupcakes on Cupcake Thursdays lasts right to the end of the day. Not like lots left over, but sometimes just one or two. This Thursday I walked into the office at 11am and they were all gone.

That’s really all the justification you needed, right?

Without further adieu then:

Gingerbread Latte Cupcakes
with Ginger Spice Buttercream Icing

Cake ingredients:
350g unsalted butter
300g dark brown sugar
3 large eggs
1 double espresso (about 100mL)
200g plain flour
100g self-raising flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon bicarbonate soda
2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
3 tablespoons dark treacle // moleasses
100mL double cream
1 tablespoon gingerbread syrup (optional)
Ginger preserves (optional)

Heat oven to 180C and line cupcake tin with papers. This made 24 standard sized cupcakes.

Make a double espresso and sit aside to cool. If you can’t make espresso at home, use about a half cup of strong black coffee.

In a mixing bowl, beat room temperature butter until soft and fluffy, then add sugar and mix well. Add each egg, mixing in between.
Stir in espresso.
Add the flour and other dry ingredients and continue to mix. Fold in cream and treacle and mix until even, making sure the treacle isn’t just stuck to the bowl or the beaters.

If you are a Starbucks Gingerbread Latte addict, you can add their syrup to make it taste as close to the drink as possible. If you just like ginger and coffee, then this is totally optional.

Once this is mixed, it should have a mousse-like texture. Scoop into the cups, filling just over halfway. Bake for about 18 minutes, or until a chopstick comes out clean. Let cakes cool on a wire rack.

When totally cool, use a melon baller to scoop out the centre of a cupcake, then fill with a teaspoon of ginger preserves (found with the jams at the supermarket) and replace the top of the cake. It’s not too sweet and will keep the cakes moist longer…in theory. I didn’t get to test that, really.

Icing ingredients:
300g unsalted butter at room temperature
Icing sugar to taste—around 300-400g
1 teaspoon ginger extract/flavouring
1 teaspoon gingerbread syrup (optional)
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon…plus extra for dusting
2 tablespoons marshmallow fluff
food colouring (optional)
crystallised ginger pieces for the top

In a mixing bowl, beat butter until fluffy. Mix in part of the icing sugar until consistency is even. Then add all the rest—same thing as above for the gingerbread syrup—and mix well. Continue to add more icing sugar until it reaches the sweetness and thickness you like.

As British butter is very yellow, I sometimes find it’s tough to get icing to a nice colour without food colouring. I actually just added a little brown to this one so it would tone it down from the happy yellow and look a bit more gingery. You could make it any colour you like, but just remember the flecks from the cinnamon will show, even if you decide to make it neon green.

Spread on cooled cupcakes with a knife or a piping bag, and dust with more cinnamon. Add crystallised ginger to the tops of some cupcakes and you’re done!

xlovesx

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17 December 2006

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