I love baking, I particularly love baking in the weeks leading up to Christmas and my all time favourite treat to bake is gingerbread, Leo has inherited my love for these biscuits bursting with spices and flavour and he has been asking for them for over a week now. A while a go I baked a gingercake and iced it with spiced rum buttercream and it was amazing, if I do say so myself. So yesterday I decided to adapt this recipe slightly and voilà, the gingerbread muffins with rum buttercream frosting were born. If you don’t know me personally and have not been subjected to eating things I have baked before, you should know that my treats are no show stoppers to envy those of Mary Berry herself – although they may rarely be pretty, they always taste good. For the little people in you life I would suggest icing them before you add the rum to the mixture, the rum comes through quite strongly. I am not sure if you can get drunk via cake but I wouldn’t want to risk it!
So here is the recipe, Gingerbread muffins iced with rum buttercream, topped with festive gingerbread men (a lengthy title I know-suggestions welcome!)…
Ingredients…
For the gingerbread men,,,
2tsp ground ginger
1tsp bicarb of soda
1tsp cinnamon
3 tbsp golden syrup
1 beaten egg
2oz butter
3oz light brown sugar
For the muffins
5oz butter
5oz dark brown sugar
5oz self raising flour
3 eggs
1tso ground ginger
1tsp cinnamon
1tsp cloves
1tsp allspice
For the buttercream
Morgans spiced rum
6oz icing sugar
3oz butter
Method
This recipe makes 6 large muffins or 12 smaller cakes. The gingerbread recipe will make approx 12 small ginger bread.
1. Sift flour, bicarbonate of soda and all the spices together into a large bowl. Rub in the butter until the mixture resemble fluffy breadcrumbs – if you’ve not made gingerbread before it is a messy process!
2. Mix in the sugar and add the beaten egg and golden syrup. Mix until all the ingredients are combined.
3, Wrap dough in cling film and put in the fridge, My mixture ended up a little runny so I left in the fridge for about 20 minutes.
4. Slightly flour a large surface and a rolling pin. Roll out dough to desired thickness and cut out gingerbread men. I had planned to stand mine on the frosting but they ended up too big and heavy, if you want to try this then I would say use the smallest cutter you can find or go free hand if you’re feeling brave.
5. Place on a greased baking try and bake for 15 minutes on 180/gas 4.
6. While the gingerbread men are cooking measure out all ingredients for the muffins.
7. Mix sugar and butter in a food processor until combined. Sift in the flour and all the spices and mix well.
8. Add the eggs gradually and mix. The muffin mixture will look really runny but that’s ok, these cakes are really moist.
9. Add 6 large muffins cases to a baking tray or 12 cupcake cases and add mixture evenly. I over filled mine by accident and some of them exploded a bit (see photo above, oops) so make sure you don’t add too much to each case.
10. Remove gingerbread from oven and leave to cool on a wire rack. Bake muffins at 180/gas 4 for 15-20minutres. They are done when they are firm but still have a bit of a bounce when you press the top.
11. Remove cakes from oven and leave to cool. Measure out half the icing sugar for frosting and mix with the butter.
12. Once combined, add the rest of the icing sugar and stir until smooth. Add 2 bottle caps full of spiced rum (or more, depending how boozey you want the cakes to be!) and stir. If the mixture goes too runny, keep adding icing sugar until desired consistency.
13. Put icing into a piping bag and decorate cakes once they have completely cooled. I am not very good at piping so I am sure your cakes will end up looking more attractive than mine!
14. Top with gingerbread men or if your biscuits end up too big (like mine, ahem..), just lie them down for a little rest on the side.
15. Eat and enjoy 🙂
Do you like baking at Christmas time? If you enjoy muffins, gingerbread men and rum, then you really should give these a go, what’s not to like? 🙂
