Gingerbread Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

Fluffy and delicious homemade Gingerbread Cupcakes filled with the beautiful warm spices of the Holiday Season, topped with a silky-smooth Maple Cream Cheese Frosting. Holiday baking doesn’t get any better than this!

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You’re going to love these soft and moist Gingerbread Cupcakes! They’ve been on repeat leading into the holiday season -we just can’t get enough of them! Gingerbread is such holiday staple around here, so check out my other gingerbread recipes, including my delicious Gingerbread Truffles and warm and spicy Speculaas Sugar Cookies (they're seriously like the ultimate sugar cookie imo)

My Gingerbread Cupcakes are made with buttermilk, so they’re super-soft and fluffy, and the addition of golden syrup makes them extra warm and Christmassy. Maple Cream Cheese Frosting is the perfect topping for these cupcakes, as it really brings home those Christmas flavours. It’s the same frosting I use in my filled Snickerdoodles and it’s to die for!

Why You Will Love This Recipe

The cupcakes are super soft and fluffy
The recipe makes 8, but you can easily double it for a crowd
You can top them with little Gingerbread Men to make them super festive
The combination of Gingerbread spices with the Maple frosting is next level
You can make it just using a handheld electric mixer

Ingredients

For the Cupcakes

Unsalted butter
Egg
Vanilla extract
Buttermilk
Golden syrup
Brown sugar
Plain flour: (all purpose flour)
Bicarbonate soda
Baking soda
Ginger
Cinnamon
Nutmeg
Allspice

For the Frosting

Cream cheese
Butter
Pure icing sugar
Pure maple syrup
Optional mini gingerbread men

Substitutions and Additions

Golden syrup: if you can’t get golden syrup, swap it for an equal amount of treacle
Spices: if you’ve tried (or want to try!) my Speculaas Spice Mix, simply swap the spices for 2 teaspoons of Speculaas Mix
Maple Cream Cheese Frosting: you can top these Gingerbread cupcakes with your favourite frosting instead and sprinkle them with cinnamon. They're delicious with a cinnamon cream cheese frosting as well!
Plain flour: for the ultimate in soft cupcakes, you can use cake flour instead

Step by Step Instructions

Line a cupcake pan with 8 cupcake liners
Pre heat your oven to 180 (350)
In a large bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients (excluding sugar) and set aside
In a medium mixing bowl, mix the butter and sugar on medium speed until creamy. You can do this with an electric hand-held mixer, or use a stand mixer with a paddle attachment (I use a hand mixer)
Add the egg and mix in by hand or with a mixer on low speed, then mix through the vanilla and golden syrup
Add half of the flour mixture and fold through, followed by half of the buttermilk. Repeat with the remaining half and mix until just combined
Using a large ice cream scoop, scoop the cupcake batter into the 8 papers
Bake for 21-22 minutes, until the tops spring back when touched (you can also insert a cake tester or skewer to make sure)
Allow to cool in the pan before moving them to a wire rack to cool completely
Prepare the Maple Cream Cheese Frosting, then pop it into a piping bag fitted with a star piping tip and pipe it onto the cooled cupcakes, then sprinkle with a little cinnamon
Pop a little gingerbread man into the frosting for fun

Tips and Tricks

As with most cake recipes, the dry ingredients should be only just mixed in, to avoid a heavy (over mixed) cake
I bake my cupcakes in a convention oven. If you are baking with a fan, reduce the temperature to 160 Celsius or 320 Fahrenheit
For the frosting, I always use pure maple syrup, as it is far superior to maple-flavoured syrup!

Serving Suggestions

Christmas Dessert: as a part of your Christmas dessert table, or with a cup of tea and the end of the day
Afternoon Tea: to get you into the holiday mood
As a Gingerbread Cake: try baking this recipe in a small loaf pan and reduce the frosting by half
Mini Cupcakes: make these are gorgeous little teatime treats and turn them into mini cupcakes -just adjust the bake time accordingly

Storage

Room temperature: in cooler weather, they are fine stored at room temperature for a couple of days
Refrigerate: because of the cream cheese in the frosting, these are better kept in the fridge, in an airtight container for up to 3 days
Freezer: in an airtight container, they will last 3 months (either plain or frosted)

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