Hollo everybody as you can see I am in the kitchen
I am getting festive, and I'm going to do some baking because everyone loves to bake around this time of year
I'm working with Waitrose in this video as part of their new Christmas campaign Christmas together
Which is essentially everyone coming together friends family strangers and making the most of the Christmas season
Whether thats with cooking, baking,
Or simply just having fun christmas is a time for everyone to be together and that is exactly
What Waitrose wants to get across which I think is lovely
so in this video i'm gonna be making some gingerbread fairy light cupcakes
I've done this recipe before on my blog
But I'm mixing up the decoration a little bit because I saw a really cool picture on Pinterest
That I'm going to attempt to copy because it looks really cool and very magical very Christmassy
So let's get started first thing you want to do is pre-heat your oven to 175 degrees Celsius
get yourself a baking tin or a cupcake baking tin and
Fill it with your chosen cupcake cases. I've gone for gold because I think it's quite Christmassy
Perfect okay now you're all prepared. It's time to start mixing
Which is the messy job, but also the fun job, so I'm going to pop that to one side
If you're planning on doing any baking around Christmas season
Get organized get all your ingredients out make sure that all around you
So you're not like scrambling through cupboards trying to find things if it's all there out front of you
It makes it much more simpler and much more enjoyable right I've got my trusty KitchenAid first thing
I'm gonna do is cream together the butter and the sugar
so
Let's get our mixing bowl and our scales
I've got my butter here and
We need 75 grams of butter
That's 96 so I'll take some off
There we go pop that to the side because you will need it for later. I'm now gonna pop the butter in the KitchenAid
Now we need to weigh out the sugar and we need 100 grams of caster sugar
Now you've done that you want to cream that together, so it's all nice and soft and smooth
Next thing you need to add to the butter and sugar is your treacle we need 125
Milliliters of treacle I can appreciate measuring up treacle is not the easiest
There we go
Don't lick treacle out of the thing it's not like golden syrup. It doesn't taste good
It tastes rank if you just eat it out of the bin trust me. I think I did that last time
Pour that in
There we go, made a right old mess
Next thing you need to do is crack in one large egg and one large egg yolk
I am using the Waitrose free-range eggs all their eggs are free-range which is good
And it's always nicer
I think to use larger eggs in baking
So the second egg you do only want the yolk so you need to do a little bit of
egg dancing
There we go happy with that, in it goes perfect now you want to give that a good mix
Doesn't look too appetizing right now, but trust me it will be lovely
Now in a separate Bowl you want to mix together all your dry ingredients, so I'm going to move the eggs away
So you want 175 grams of plain flour
I always shake my whole body when I get flour out
I'm like
Okay
cocoa powder
Here
We want 1 tablespoon of cocoa powder
In it goes you then want to add 1 teaspoon of baking powder
Now it's time to add all your spices which make the cake tastes absolutely
Amazing this is what for me makes this feel like a very Christmassy recipe because it's very warming and spicy and just delicious
Basically so the first spice you want to add to your dry mixture is ginger
And you want to add one and a quarter teaspoon of ginger. I think ginger is my favorite spice
hundred percent
one and a quarter
There we go the next spice you want to add is cinnamon and you want to add one teaspoon of cinnamon
It's like Christmas you could literally just smell that all day
There we go the next one that you want to add is mixed spice or allspice and you want to add half a teaspoon of that
And
Then lastly you want to grab some ground nutmeg
Which also whoa that smells so much stronger in this than it does when you bake with it. Whoa. again
You want to add half the teaspoon of that?
Now you're all spiced up spice up your life we're never done
I'm also going to add a quarter of a teaspoon of salt as well
And that is all your dry ingredients now in a bowl you then want to add it to your wet ingredients and
You just want to mix this until it's just combined you don't want to over beat it
I've got spices up my nose these are going to be delicious
Okay for this next bit you want to grab yourself a
Saucepan just a little one and pop it on a small hole and you want to use
125 milliliters of
milk
All right
Since this measuring jug is too big, so I don't know I've just made a guess
And you want to pour it in a saucepan
And
You just want to really carefully heat up the milk being careful not to boil it. That's the last thing you want
The milk is now hot, so I'm going to add that into the mixture
very gently
Add a little bit and I'm gonna
This is when the mixture starts to look so delicious
just gonna use my spatula
And make sure I've got everything of the edges
Now you have your absolutely delicious looking cake mixture, it's time to spoon it into your cupcake cases
two spoons
One for spooning
One for pushing it into the cupcake cases
Now all you have to do is pop these in your oven for around
20 minutes or until they are springy to touch a little bit more golden on the outside and tidy up your kitchen
We don't have much longer on the cupcakes
but whilst they're still in the oven I'm gonna start on making the buttercream icing this is literally a simple buttercream icing recipe and
This is just a general one that I tend to follow so for this you will need
240 grams of unsalted butter
Let's see how much this is
171 so we do need another
Oh 245
Perfect you want to beat this until it is really light in colour
so basically until it goes from yellow to white
Cakes are out now you need to put these on a cooling tray
Until they are actually cool not like a little bit warm, or I don't have time
I'm going to fit the icing onto a warm, hot cake wait till they're cold, otherwise your cakes will look really bad
I do think the one thing you need to have patience for like a hundred percent
Mark, I'm talking to you now
These are on the cooling rack I'm gonna leave these
Just there to the side
Whilst I carry on with the butter icing I've been mixing this for around five minutes
I'm just gonna do once more just scraping all the butter off the edge
Just to make sure we've got every little bit, and it's as creamy as possible
Okay, I'm now going to measure out 400 grams of icing sugar into a bowl
There we go
it's essentially nearly the entire box and
You're just going to very gently cream the butter and add little bits of icing sugar as you go
hmm smells so good
Now you're going to want to add two teaspoons of vanilla I have some vanilla bean paste one
And two
Then you want to add four tablespoons of milk although
I would do this gradually so you can see whether the consistency of the icing is how you want it
So I'll maybe do two first
Mix that
this looks so great
Should I try a little bit
Hmm honestly, I think this is the best buttercream icing I've ever made
oh, one more tablespoon
Okay, I'm going in for my fourth tablespoon
Now what my cakes are completely cool
I've got the writing chocolate in a glass of boiling water, so that's nice and melted now
It's time to do my favorite bit. Which is to ice the cupcakes
Just going to cut the end of my piping bag off
And pop my nozzle in
And then fold your bag over
And start filling it
Right I am going to start from the outside and work my right in so that I can make like a point
I've decided to go with M&Ms because they are the brightest colors and for this because we're doing like some fairy lights
Needs to be bright so oh
That wasn't as smooth as I thought it was gonna be I thought it was just gonna go ahh
My writing chocolate has fully melted you could cut the end off
You want to start and kind of just go all the way around to the top
Don't know how easy this is gonna be with chocolate. Let's just give this a go
There we go perfect one done
Okay
I Quite like it when it goes a wiggly
It looks like proper fairy lights you know what I mean
Okay
Chocolate is done
I actually do think this is going to taste much nicer because we've used chocolate not
Writing icing so you want to get your M&Ms, and then you just want to stick them in
Very light
Okay, and there you go. These are my
Definitely don't look quite as good as the Pinterest version, but I'm really happy with them, and they are very delicious cupcakes
I will leave all the
Ingredients and the links and sources to everything down below if you guys want to recreate these in time for Christmas
Don't forget to share your photos or videos of your together moments using the hashtag Christmas together
I think that's gonna be such a lovely positive hashtag, and I can't wait to see what you guys post in it
I also can't wait to see if you decide to make these they'll probably look better than mine
but I'm excited to see them give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it, and I will see you again very soon I
Really want to eat one of these should I try I'm gonna try one guys
Gingerbread cupcake
I've got it all around my mouth?
Oh my
These are the best things I've ever made