Christmas Cupcakes

While the majority of my Christmas holidays were taken up with present-buying, Articulate and essays, I found some time to make some cupcakes for Christmas Day.  I wanted to use flavours which taste essentially of Christmas, so I chose the Gingerbread flavoured ones I made for the course Christmas dinner and some original Chocolate Log cupcakes.

Gingerbread Cupcakes

I used the same recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days but for some reason the mixture did not smell quite as ‘Deck the Halls’ as before.  Fortunately, the Christmas muse managed to get me before I dyed the icing bright red; equally as fortunate, Tom’s mum gave me some Christmas-shaped sprinkles to decorate the cakes with, and my grandma gave me the toppers.  I have never used toppers on cupcakes; I think I am naturally drawn to decorations which are edible and preferably made almost entirely of sugar.  However, these looked sweet and were kind of a souvenir which allowed people to have a small reminder of their cake while eating it too.

Chocolate Log Cupcakes

While I doubt the wisdom of adding mint to chocolate and carrot to cake, I have a strong and unwavering belief that chocolate added to more chocolate can only lead to good things.  As such, chocolate logs rank very highly with me.  Originally I intended to make a full-sized and traditional chocolate log (the size of a full-sized standard cake, not a full-sized log) but it seemed somehow more inventive to try and reproduce that distinctive taste in a miniature form.  It was time to see if chocolate logs and cupcakes were a winning team.

For the actual cake I used the chocolate cupcake recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days, as the vanilla cupcake recipe had worked so well in the mini birthday cakes.  While the cakes cooled off after baking, I mixed up the chocolate butter cream for the filling and the icing from the recipe in Love Food: The Cupcake.  I chose this particular book because the vanilla butter cream recipe produced beautiful, light icing and adding chocolate to this seemed like an exceptionally good idea.

Once the cakes were completely cool, I used a small, sharp knife to cut out a little well in the top of each cake.  Each hole had to be deep enough to contain a reasonable amount of filling, but not so deep that it went through the cake and made it split.  Once each had been filled, I replaced the part I had cut out and iced the cakes with a pallet knife.

I used the snowflake-shaped sprinkles to cover the cakes, as I thought the white looked nice on the brown.  I cut a chocolate Flake into sections about a centimetre long, dusted these with icing sugar and put them on the cake.  You may possibly be wondering why I did not dust the whole cake with icing sugar: I had already put the snowflakes on when the Christmas muse (here embodied by my mum) suggested this.  However, I still think they turned out rather nicely and tasted quite similar to the real thing, although next time I might try a solid chocolate topping.

The curse of the dessert struck again, and everyone was so full of potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, turkey and various other birds that no one could manage much dessert.  My granddad, dad and boyfriend managed a gingerbread one each, and my brother had a chocolate log.  Fortunately, Christmas is the best time of year to drag out celebrations, and over the next few days they were forced on various people in the spirit of good will.

Merry Christmas Gingerbread Cupcakes

As the Uni term drew to a rather early close, my course mates and I found ourselves so overwhelmed by festive cheer and goodwill that some kind of course Christmas fest seemed inevitable.  Sure enough, in stepped domestic goddess Sarah and the elf to her Mrs Santa, Olivia, and suggested a Christmas dinner.  Knowing that my cooking skills are limited, I thought the best I could offer would be a dessert.  For Christmas inspiration I turned to The Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days, my new birthday book, and found Gingerbread cupcakes.  Although they sounded a bit strange, the prospect of two desserts in one was an offer I could not refuse and seemed in-keeping with Christmas generosity.  It is, after all, the thought that counts.

It turned out that these cupcakes require a lot of ingredients, including three types of spice, golden syrup and black treacle.  The kitchen smelt like a gingerbread house, which was delicious.  Once they had cooled, I mixed some cream cheese icing and waited for the Christmas muse to drop by and explain to me how to use the load of red, gold and silver edible glitter I had at my disposal.  I tried a few experiments, but the glitter was hard to control and I had no clear idea of what I was trying to do.  In the end, I mixed half of the gold into the icing and added a lot of red food dye.  Just as I set down the bottle of food dye and surveyed the 'happy red' icing, the Christmas muse suggested making snowy white snowman faces.  Sigh.  I carried on regardless, icing them with the red icing and my shiny new pallet knife (such an unappreciated tool unless one is without it), before melting some white chocolate and carefully spelling out ‘Merry Christmas’.  On closer inspection, the glitter had disappeared into the icing, suggesting that further work on the use of edible glitter may be a future project.  I put them on a tray and braved the cold and embarrassment of carrying a tray of cupcakes round the chilly streets.

Like fairies in a pantomime, Sarah and Olivia produced a delicious Christmas dinner, including four kinds of meat, homemade Yorkshire puddings (unheard of where I’m from), potato in three different forms and enough vegetables to supply a family of rabbits throughout the festive season.  With everyone full to bursting, it seemed that just as at my family birthday party the desserts would go unloved.  However, students are hungrier people than proper grown-ups, and gradually the cakes began to dwindle in numbers.  They did taste like gingerbread and the cream cheese and chocolate added a bit of sweetness.  Although the food colouring meant the icing was not as tasty as that which the Hummingbird recipe usually produces, it was not particularly noticeable.  I even managed to convince people to take them home, suggesting that the unusual combination of biscuit and cake was a success.

If you are looking for an original idea for a Christmas dessert, these work really well.  Just make sure you consult the Christmas muse about your decoration well in advance of adding any red food dye.