Winter spice cupcakes

At Christmas time, it’s normally all about mince pies and fruit cake where I’m from, but sometimes I fancy something a bit different. These spicy, gingerbready cupcakes with sweet vanilla buttercream icing are the perfect alternative if you don’t like the typical dried fruit-based bakes at this time of year. They have all the spices that scream Christmas: cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves with a hint of vanilla to mellow the spice out. I will also say that these cupcakes are a great way to use up that black treacle that sits at the back of your cupboard!

Ingredients

100g light brown muscovado sugar

120g black treacle

110g soft butter

180g plain flour

2 eggs

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

150 ml milk

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground nutmeg

1/2 tsp ground cloves

For the icing

200g icing sugar

100g soft unsalted butter

1 tsp vanilla extract

2-3tbs milk

Tiny amount of purple food colouring

Festive sugar decorations

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C and line a muffin tin with cupcake cases. Melt the butter, muscovado sugar and black treacle together.
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt and spices. Heat up the milk until lukewarm and mix in the bicarbonate of soda.
3. Pour the melted butter and sugary liquid into the flour along with the eggs. Mix well to combine into a batter.
4. Pour the milk into the batter and mix.
5. Transfer the cake batter into a jug for easy pouring. Next, pour the batter into the muffin cases 3/4 of the way. Bake in the middle of the oven for 15-17 minutes or until the cupcakes spring back to the touch. You can also insert a cocktail stick to see if it comes out clean. Allow the cupcakes to cool.
6. Make the buttercream: Put the softened butter into a large mixing bowl and sieve in the icing sugar. Add in the milk and vanilla extract, and mix with an electric hand whisk or, alternatively, do this process in a stand mixer. Mix until you have a soft, fluffy buttercream with no bits of icing sugar peaking through.
7. To make your buttercream whiter: Dip a cocktail stick into the purple food colouring – the tiniest of dips! And then poke the cocktail stick into the icing. You only want a speck of colouring in there, otherwise you will turn it purple. Whisk the colouring into the icing, and you’ll find that the icing will turn whiter.
8. Once the cupcakes are cool, spoon the icing onto them, using a butter knife to spread and swirl it around. Decorate with whatever festive decorations you have and maybe some edible glitter, if you feel so inclined.