December Cupcakes

This month's cupcakes were inspired by traditional Christmas flavors and colors!

Gingerbread

gingerbread cupcake

I used this recipe from Sally's Baking Addiction for the cupcakes. They baked up beautifully but were pretty dark and spicy. They were good, but they definitely needed the cream cheese frosting to mellow them out.

cream cheese frosting

For cream cheese frosting, I use an 8 oz block of cream cheese, 2 sticks of butter, and a 1 lb bag (4 cups) of powdered sugar. Add 1 tablespoon of vanilla and beat until fluffy. You can add some cream if it's too thick. For these cupcakes, I piped on a base of cream cheese frosting with a large French star tip, sprinkled some turbinado sugar for color, and then used a large round tip to pipe a snowman. The snowman's nose is a chocolate sprinkle and his hat is a chocolate chip.

Peppermint Hot Chocolate

chocolate cake

This recipe from Annie's Eats is my go-to chocolate cupcake recipe. It makes exactly 24 cupcakes and they're perfect every time. To make these taste more "hot-chocolatey" I used milk instead of the hot water and used my least "dark" cocoa powder. I also pushed a couple of mini marshmallows into the top of each cupcake before baking.

peppermint buttercream

I used my usual buttercream recipe (3 sticks butter, 6 cups powdered sugar, 4-5 T cream, 1 T vanilla) and added 1/2 tsp peppermint extract. I put a line of red gel food coloring down the inside of the piping bag before loading the frosting. 

The cupcakes were garnished with mini marshmallows, mini chocolate chips, and mini candy canes. 

White Chocolate Cranberry

vanilla cupcake

This recipe from American Heritage Cooking is my current favorite for vanilla cupcakes

They're moist and have plenty of vanilla flavor without being too sweet. They have nicely domed tops, too.

cranberry filling 

I didn't actually use a recipe for this one. I just put a bag of cranberries in a pan with some sugar, water, and the juice of one orange. I cooked them until they burst and then chilled the filling overnight. I cut a core out of the cupcakes (I prefer a small serrated paring knife* over a fancy cupcake corer) and put in about 2 teaspoons of the filling.

white chocolate buttercream

I used this recipe from The Recipe Rebel for the white chocolate buttercream. For some reason, mine didn't set up. Maybe my white chocolate was still too warm when I beat it into the frosting? However, the soft consistency did give the frosting a nice snowdrift effect, so it turned out just fine. These cupcakes were garnished with sparkling cranberries and Wilton sugar pearl sprinkles*.

sparkling cranberries

I used this recipe from The Wicked Noodle to make my sparkling sugared cranberries. They might sound strange, but these things are seriously addictive. They do require several hours (overnight if you can) of drying time, so plan ahead!

*I added Amazon affiliate links for some special ingredients and products mentioned in this post - they are items I actually use and recommend.