Christmas Cupcakes

Merry Christmas everyone! I am completely bonkers for Christmas. It's my favourite time of the year! Therefore I thought the best way to kick off the festive season would be to make Christmas cupcakes. I made these cupcakes on the 1st of December in my Christmas jumper, you really can't get more festive than that! These cupcakes taste like Christmas and are full of warm aromatic spices. This recipe comes from cupcake Jemma and makes 24 cupcakes.

Ingredients:

240 g self raising flour 270 g butter 250 g sugar 1 1/2 tsp ginger 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon 3/4 tsp cloves 1/2 tsp salt 4 eggs 3 tbsp milk 1 tbsp golden syrup About 3/4 of full recipe of Vanilla buttercream (I already have a recipe for this on my website) To decorate:

A star nozzle 24 red bows ( I made them out of fondant) Small red balls to represent berries ( I made mine out of fondant) Sprinkles (optional) Piping bag Small palette knife Green gel food colouring Preheat the oven to 170 Celsius. Put the flour, sugar, butter, spices, salt and eggs into a bowl and mix on high until, the mixture is lump free and smooth.

Meanwhile, whisk together the milk and golden syrup. Then decrease the speed of the mixer onto low and pour the milk mixture in.

Line a cupcake tin with cupcake cases and spoon the mixture into the cases, about 3/4 of the way full. (I have this really cool ice cream scoop that scrapes the mixture out, it's so handy for making cupcakes and other bakes.)

Place into the oven and bake for 22 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into a cupcake comes out clean. Leave aside to cool completely.

Time for the fun part! It's time to decorate. I decided to cover each cupcake with a thin layer of white buttercream (this was achieved by spreading it on with my mini palette knife) and then I dyed the rest of the buttercream a light green and placed it in a piping bag with a star tip nozzle. Then I piped little stars around my cupcake and decorated each of them with one red bow and about 4 red "berries". I finished them off by scattering some gold stars and some gold lustre dust to give them a little Christmas shine.