Happy Christmas Eve Eve! This season I have been wanting to make these little puds and thought that today was the day to do so. I am not a huge fan of Christmas Puddings – I don’t like dried fruit – but I love the traditional look they have on the Christmas table. When thinking of another desert that could work, I felt gingerbread muffins were just as warm and festive because they use cinnamon and ginger. Cinnamon has such a wonderfully Christmassy scent! And, of course, they are brown and could disguise themselves as puddings. I hope you all have a lovely Christmas!x
What you’ll need:
250g Self Raising Flour 1 Tsp Ground Cinnamon
½ Tsp Bicarb 175ml Milk
½ Tsp Salt Pinch Nutmeg
2 Tsp Ground Ginger 150g Soft Light Brown Sugar
2 Tablespoons Syrup 1 Tablespoon Treacle
85g Unsalted Butter 1 Egg
For the icing:
Ready to roll royal icing in White, Green and Red Scallop Circle Cookie Cutter
Holly and Berries Cutter Apricot Jam
Step One:
Preheat your oven to 190°C and line your muffin tin with cases.
Step Two:
In a large bowl, measure out and add in the flour, bicarbonate of soda, salt, ground ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar. Use your hands to combine your dry ingredients.
Step Three:
Put your wet ingredients into a small saucepan and heat until the butter has melted and mixed with the milk and syrups. At this stage I recommend not adding the egg – to avoid a scrambled mess!! Coming from experience, scrambled egg muffins are not nice. ;)
Step Four:
Add your wet ingredients to the dry ingredients in your large bowl. Whisk your egg in a little bowl and then add into your mixture.
Step Five:
Spoon your batter into your muffin cases! I used an ice cream scoop to make sure they are all even. Bake for 20-25 minutes.
Step Six:
Allow your muffins to cool completely before starting to ice. Royal icing heats up quickly and becomes extremely hard to use!
Step Seven:
Add a dollop of Apricot Jam into a saucepan and heat up until warm and pliable. Then roll out your white icing until about 2mm thick. Cut out your little circles. On the reverse side, paint on some hot apricot jam to your white circle. This acts as a glue!
Step Eight:
Take the cases off your muffins ready for assembly. Then place on your white sticky icing circle and pat down gently.
Step Nine:
Next, roll out and prepare your green icing. Cut out your holly and berry shapes and apply some jam to the reverse side also. Stick onto your white icing! Then just roll some tiny little berries using your red icing. And ta-dah!
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