Gingerbread Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

Okay, listen up -

Fall weather is in the air and cold weather brings the sense coziness. Before we know it, it will be November then December and all the holidays bring family cheer and laughter.

But, what's missing?!?

A dessert to tie it all together! That is where these Gingerbread Cupcakes make a grand entrance!

Personally, I've never been a fan of gingerbread. I think it was the molasses I did not like. It was to strong of a flavor for it. But, these cupcakes offer a great balance of the molasses and brown sugar.

To start, we whisk together the dry ingredients to get them well incorporated. The spices that will contribute to the gingerbread are ground ginger, cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon. I also like to add some cardamom spice but not too much. Maybe 1/4 of a teaspoon.

Then, to work on the wet ingredients, we will be using buttermilk instead of regular milk and mixing it with the molasses until it is evenly spread. Now, the molasses may take forever to blend into the buttermilk. The main point here is to get the molasses to smooth out in the mixture so that when it is time to combine the wet and dry ingredients, the molasses does not go into a ball. Plus, the tartness of the buttermilk starts the process of calming down the molasses. I don't know if that is what it was meant to do, but it works.

Instead of creaming together butter and white sugar, which we normally do with cookies. We will cream together butter with brown sugar. Brown sugar has this more nutty, cinnamon like flavor which is great for these cupcakes. Since we are trying to mellow out the molasses, these types of ingredients help bring out the desired taste.

As we start to combine the wet and dry ingredients in the electric mixer, we really want to make sure the batter is smooth and everything is well combined. For instance, we want to make sure the molasses gets mixed evenly and the butter/brown sugar does not create any bumps in the batter. But, we got this!

When the batter is the right consistency, take a 12 cupcake cavity pan, line them with cupcake liners, and start to fill up the molds. These will bake and once a toothpick comes out clean, the pan will be removed. As I always say, please be reminded that these will continue to cook for a few minutes after removing them from the oven

TIME FOR THE ICING! This is my favorite part; and probably the part that makes me love these so much. Aside from my raspberry mini cakes, I think these were the only desserts with an icing.

The icing was just cream cheese, butter, vanilla extract, powdered sugar, and cinnamon. My trick for the cream cheese is I get the spreadable cream cheese from the store. I don't get the block and wait for it to get to room temperate. The spreadable cream cheese is already smooth and soft.

Pretty much you just combine all these ingredients and when the mixture is smooth with no bumps, just pipe it onto the cooled down cupcakes. Very important that the cupcakes are cooled because the icing will just melt.

In the future, I would probably garnish these with a cinnamon stick or a small gingerbread man.

These were a HUGE hit to those who taste tested. Definitely recommend for the upcoming holiday season approaching right before our eyes!

Hope you enjoyed!

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Thank you for reading! I appreciate your support and time to read my posts as Cafe Nessa. Please give me a like on this post if this is something you would buy to add to your dessert/breakfast options.

Stay happy,

Vanessa