Spiced Festive Cupcakes

It’s the season where I add cinnamon and ginger and cloves to EVERYTHING. I have a little jar of spices I mixed together just for the wintery bakes (of course I do) and it comes in handy at times like this.

For the spice mix, I add together something roughly like 6 tbsp ground cinnamon, 2 tbsp ground cloves, 2 tsp ground nutmeg, 1 tbsp ground ginger, 2 bits of star anise, cinnamon bark and 6 cardamom pods into a small kilner jar. Then I mix it all together and use it throughout my Christmas bakes!

Whatever  you decide to use, these cupcakes are supremely delicious and you’re all welcome for this gorgeous recipe. I decided to ice them in a very festive way, with little wreaths and trees which are ridiculously simple to pipe (it’s just little splodges in shapes) and look (in my humble opinion) really cute!

makes about 2 dozen

Ingredients for the Cake

• 330g plain flour
• 1.5 tbsp spice mix, above, or:
• - 1 tsp ginger
• - 1 tsp cinammon, 
• - 1 tsp vanilla sugar or vanilla extract
• - 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• - ½ tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• pinch salt
• 220 g butter
• 150g caster sugar
• 200g brown sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 cup greek yogurt
• 1 tbsp lemon juice

Ingredients for Icing

• 70g butter
• 300g icing sugar
• 1 tsp cinammon
• Green food colouring
• A few tsp milk as needed
• Sprinkles etc as needed

Method:

Oven at 175 degrees and line 2 x 12 cupcake pan.

Mix together your flour, spices vanilla sugar, leavening agents and salt.

In a separate bowl, beat the butter, then add sugar and beat again. Add eggs one at a time followed by the yogurt and lemon juice.

Beat in the flour mixture gradually. You might need a little milk at the end to get to proper consistency.

Spoon between the cupcake cases.

Bake for 25 minutes then let cool on a wire rack.

For the icing, beat the butter until smooth and gradually add the icing sugar.

Remove a few tbsp. at this point to a separate bowl and add some cinnamon.

To the rest of the mixture, add the green food colouring until you get a festive hue.

You might need a little milk to get it to the right consistency, conversely you might need more icing sugar. Play around until you have the right icing for piping.

For the wreaths, spread a little cinnamon icing on the cupcake with a knife, then pipe over the green wreath shape and decorate however you like.

For the Christmas trees, just keep piling the icing higher, and put a little sparkle on top!