Alice in Cupcakeland

I've already started thinking about what kind of cupcakes I can make for Christmas, and figured that there could be nothing better than combining my favourite cookie with a cupcake! I've teamed these up with a chocolate cream cheese icing, but you could use butter cream, sugar or plain cream cheese icing.

Ingredients

1/2 c self-raising flour
1/2 c plain flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 c brown sugar
1 egg
90g softened butter
1/4 cup milk
2 TBS golden syrup


Preheat the oven to 170 C and line a 12 cupcake pan.

Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl, in another bowl, whip the butter and sugar until it's light and fluffy. Add the rest of the wet ingredients and beat on high until combined.

Slowly add the dry ingredients, adding a bit at a time and then beating thoroughly to knock air into the batter. Once you've added all the dry ingredients, beat the batter on high for 2 minutes, until it's smooth and lighter in colour.

Fill the cupcake liners 3/4 of the way full with the batter, and bake for 30 minutes.

Icing

1/8 c softened butter
120 g cream cheese
44 g chocolate broken into small pieces
tiny pinch salt
1.5 c icing sugar
1/4 cup cream
1/4 tsp vanilla essence


Heat the cream until it's just under boiling. Remove from the heat and add the chocolate to the heated cream. Stir until the chocolate is melted into the cream, then let the mix cool completely.

Cream together the butter and cream cheese. Add the melted chocolate mixture, salt, icing sugar and vanilla. Beat until smooth.

note: This makes enough for 24 cupcakes, you you might like to halve the mix if you're only making 12!