I was looking for a recipe for cupcakes to make to take to a Christmas picnic with a few of my friends. I decided that plain boring old cupcakes just weren’t going to cut it and I came across this recipe on Cupcake Project.
They were very easy to make and I had everything in the cupboard except for the molasses which were easy to buy from Woolworths. Lily helped me to mix everything together and I had to stop her at numerous points as she wanted to keep adding more of the spices (I think she just liked shaking the bottle).
I cooked the cupcakes for the 20 minutes that the recipe states (175 degree celsius oven) and they seemed cooked although are quite soft. I think I actually prefer this as they ended up being very nice and moist.
The original recipe included an orange glaze as a topping but I just topped them with cream and strawberries to make santa hats. They looked fantastic and the cream really helped to cut through the almost bitterness of the cupcakes.
They went down very well except with Mr Monkey – he’s a little strange and doesn’t like gingerbread or hot cross buns or basically anything sweet with cinnamon and cloves and other spices. Weirdo. But otherwise they went down really well!
I just dropped the rest off to my coffee shop (Coffee Alchemy) to say thank you for the year of coffees and I’m hoping they enjoy them too.
So, definitely give these cupcakes a try! They seem like ordinary yummy chocolate cupcakes but the spices give a different sophistication. Will hopefully become a Christmas tradition around here 
