Christmas Party Treats

Gingerbread

Hello again everyone! I hope you are all getting into the Christmas spirit! Not long to go now until the big day. For those of you who don't know, my contract at the Science Museum ended a month ago :( 

Thankfully I was invited to the Christmas party! The beautiful people I used to work with always appreciated my baked goods, so I thought I would bake some Christmas treats to bring along to the party. 

Gingerbread is so easy to make and has such a lovely winter warmth to it! You can find plenty of recipes online for gingerbread. These gingerbread biscuits have ground cloves and ground ginger in them, but you can also use cinnamon or nutmeg. I also used light brown sugar, but if you prefer your gingerbread a darker colour then you can use dark brown sugar. 

I decorated these with some royal icing using a very fine writing nozzle, perfect for little details and writing.

Ginger and Salted Caramel Cupcakes

I also wanted to bake some cupcakes for everyone and I always struggle to find a Christmas cupcake recipe that really works. I've made chocolate and orange cupcakes before which also remind me of Christmas, but I wanted to try something different.

The cupcake batter contains two whole eggs and two egg yolks. I've never used a recipe like this before, but it made the ginger cake itself really soft and moist! Delicious!

The salted caramel icing is a bit tricky to make if you haven't made a caramel sauce before. But basically its a normal buttercream but using salted butter and mixing in homemade caramel sauce.

I decorated my cupcakes using edible glitter (I cant live without it!) and a small gingerbread biscuit decorated with royal icing. I love adding small biscuits to cupcakes, it makes you feel like you are getting two treats in one!

Overall I'm really happy with how they turned out and everyone seemed to enjoy eating them!

 Thanks for reading!