One great thing about having a food blog is that you have to get organised for occasions and good news – Christmas is just around the corner! Lots of people leave things to the last minute, like myself sometimes when it comes to stuff in general (I’ve not even bought a Christmas card yet)!
Dean and I have already gotten into the Christmas spirit and have managed to watch numerous Christmas films. I have even put the Christmas radio station on while I’m in the kitchen which is a first for me!
This weekend we are going to our local Christmas market followed by a night out with our friends Gemma and Tony, to watch Bad Santa at the cinema 😂 🎅🏻
We haven’t got our tree up yet like some people I keep seeing on Facebook, mainly because we are in the process of buying our first home, which is very exciting! It’s also however very frustrating at the same time as we still don’t have a moving date, hopefully any day now we should know! 😊 We can’t wait to get in to our new home and make it all Christmassy, we have two real Christmas trees the our garden so its going to feel a lot like Christmas this year!
We are hosting on Christmas Day this year for Dean’s family so we are both very excited to get in to the new kitchen and try some new recipes out. Hopefully they’ll enjoy being our Christmas guinea pigs!
These STICKY ginger Christmas cakes have been an idea of mine for quite some time now and I couldn’t wait to make them. They were a lot of fun to do with all the different elements to them and I was so chuffed with the end result.
I decided to put ginger and mixed spice into my cakes as I really wanted them to smell and taste very festive. I’ve learnt from making other cakes not to be shy with flavours so there’s plenty of spice in there. Using the dark muscovado sugar gave the cakes real richness, depth of flavour and colour.
I also put fudge pieces into the cake to add some stickiness and extra flavour, but for me the most stickiness came from the frosting which was an experiment of mine and it actually worked really well! Great result 👍 Just by adding the toffee sauce in blobs into the piping bag gave the icing extra flavour but also looks great all swirled in.
I decorated them with Christmas coloured sprinkles and tiny gingerbread men, they looked so cute when I’d finished, almost like they’d climbed to the top of this mountain of sticky icing! Shop for gingerbread sprinkles here.
The cupcakes went down an absolute storm in our house! Dean loved them and said they might well be the best cakes I’ve ever made! And if I can say myself I thought they were delicious and would love to make them again. I’ll let you into a secret – I ate two of them all to myself (not on the same day, that would be madness! 😂)
These cupcakes will be great for a Christmas party, children will love them as I’m sure the adults will too. You MUST get baking this Christmas!
Have a look at some of our Christmas bakes from last year:
Sticky Ginger Christmas Cupcakes
Ingredients
- 200 g fine dark muscovado sugar
- 200 g margarine / unsalted butter
- 4 eggs
- 200 g self-raising flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 3 tsp ground ginger
- 1 1/2 tsp mixed spice
- 75 g fudge pieces
Toffee sauce
- 150 ml double cream
- 43 g butter
- 50 g light muscovado sugar
- 25 g fudge pieces
Frosting
- 220 g margarine / unsalted butter
- 640 g icing sugar
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180°C / 160°C fan / 350°F / gas 4 and line a 12 hole muffin tray.
- Cream together the butter and sugar until everything is combined and is nice and fluffy.
- Add the eggs and mix until everything is combined.
- Add the flour and baking powder and mix on a medium speed until everything is combined.
- Add the ginger and mixed spies and stir into the mixture.
- Dust 55g of the fudge pieces and in self raising flour and add to the mixture, stir in.
- Divide the mixture evenly between the cases and weigh out 20g of the fudge pieces then sprinkle them on top of the cakes.
- Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes.
- While your cakes are cooking make the toffee sauce. Add all the ingredients to a saucepan and keep stirring until everything has dissolved and turned into a toffee colour, until it starts to bubble.
- Pour it into a jug so it cools down quicker.
- Take your cakes out the oven an place them on a wire rack to completely cool.
- While your cakes are cooling make your frosting. Place margarine into the bowl and sift the icing sugar, you may have to do this in batches as there is quite a lot.
- Once all the icing sugar has all been sifted, on a low speed start to whisk it up and gradually up the speed until you have a thick paste.
- Add 3 tbsp of toffee sauce and stir in so it loosens the mixture.
- Pick a nozzle of your choice and add a bit of frosting to your piping bag followed by a big dollop of toffee sauce then some more frosting.
- Pipe the frosting quite high on your cake, decorate with little gingerbread men and Christmas sprinkles.
- Serve and enjoy!
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