Things are definitely looking cheery and sparkly and sugary these days. Thanksgiving may be all about gratitude and huge, heaping platefuls of food, but food traditions around Christmas tend to have more ethereal qualities like imagination and hope and wonder.
If the essence of Christmas was boiled down into flavors they would be, for me, gingerbread and peppermint. I don’t eat much peppermint any other time of the year, with the exception of the hard candies you can scoop up on your way out of some restaurants. In a word: ordinary. But at Christmas time peppermint becomes whimsical architectural features on gingerbread houses and swings gaily from the boughs of evergreens as striped canes.
The same goes for gingerbread, as an everyday cake it helps digestion. But as a house! Or an army of Men! It is magical. Gingerbread fits with this time of year, too. Eating a gingerbread man in July would feel the same as twisting a woolen scarf around your neck and belting out a few verses of “Deck the Halls” on a summer’s day. You just don’t do that in July.
In our family, we have a tradition of Gingerbread People on Christmas morning. This is one tradition that my mom holds onto very tightly, even as scenes shift and people come and go from Christmas morning over the years. The Gingerbread People are always there, a comforting, slightly lumpy, presence.
Every Christmas morning, usually following lots of clattering very early in the kitchen, we are each handed our very own Person, a mug of hot chocolate towering with an unreasonable amount of whipped cream, and a peeled orange. “Frothy” is the best way to describe Christmas morning in our family.
My brother and I have nicknamed the cookies “Mutants” for their uniqueness. Mom is no stickler for uniformity, she eschews cookie cutters and prefers to shape by hand. Mom’s Gingerbread Mutant People are really more like soft sculptures – doughy with mismatched limbs and sorrowful red-hot eyes above enormous raisin grins.
(This skill for creating menacing-looking cute food may be genetic. Check out my attempt last year to create adorable Snowmen Cupcakes.)
You’ll have to use your imagination to picture the Gingerbread People Mutants because it has never occurred to me take a picture of one of them. They don’t hang around long, usually gone within the hour as we indulge in this once-a-year, oh-my-I-am-eating-a-giant-mutant-delicious-warm-cookie-for-breakfast, decadence.
For some reason this year I wanted to “deconstruct” the flavors of a gingerbread house into a cupcake. I didn’t want anything too heavy, and I found just what I needed in a 1964 volume of the “American Heritage Cookbook.” Not too spicey, not too sweet, and a great intro quote from Founding Father John Adams who declared molasses (a necessary ingredient in gingerbread) as an essential ingredient for American freedom: “I know not why we should blush to confess that molasses was an essential ingredient in American independence. Many great events have proceeded from much smaller causes.”
A freedom-crying cupcake! Perfect.
If you must know, colonial New Englanders really liked their rum, which needs molasses. And it was the British tax on molasses, not tea, that first got everyone’s knickers in a twist and eventually lead to the Boston Tea Party and a full-fledged Revolution. Hanging revolutionary origins on tea rather than rum, though, is much more civilized don’t you think?
John Adams comments were in reference to the Molasses Act passed by the British Parliament on Dec. 25, 1733. It gave rise to smuggling throughout the Colonies, and the eventual Sugar Act when the Molasses Act expired in 1763. The Stamp Act followed in 1765. The straw that broke the Colonists back was the Tea Act of 1773, which lead to the famous Boston Tea Party on Dec. 16, 1773.
Anyway, back to the flavors of Christmas. I briefly thought about making a gingerbread cupcake with a peppermint cream cheese frosting but in the end I went with the more traditional lemon frosting and used the peppermint to top off some chocolate cupcakes. I added some freshly grated ginger to the cupcake cake batter, just to boost the flavors a bit.
I will persist in my effort to make a cute cupcake. For now, these are tasty if not a little bit lovable in their own freedom-declaring, hope-filled way.
Gingerbread cupcakes
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature
1/2 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
2 eggs, separated
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup molasses
1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease muffin tin or line with paper cups.
Sift together flour, salt, ground ginger, and baking soda. Set aside. Separate egg whites and yolks into two separate bowls.
In a large bowl, cream butter until soft. Add sugar, a little at a time, beating until smooth. Beat egg yolks and stir into butter-sugar mixture.
Combine sour cream, molasses, and grated ginger and add to mixture, alternating with the flour combination. Beat egg whites stiffly, fold into mixture.
Fill each cupcake holder 3/4 full. Bake 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
Cool a few minutes in the cupcake pan before removing and transferring to a wire rack. Cool completely before frosting.
Chocolate fudge cupcakes
I simply used the recipe off the canister for Ghiradelli unsweetened cocoa, and reduced the milk. But you might want to try Ghiradelli’s cupcake recipe here.
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cups Ghiradelli Unsweetened Cocoa
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
1-3/4 cups sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 large eggs
3/4 cup milk
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a cupcake tin or line with paper cups.
In a medium bowl, combine flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar on medium high speed until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes. Reduce speed to low and add vanilla and eggs one at a time.
Alternatively add flour and milk (starting and ending with the flour mixture) and mix on low speed. Mix until smooth.
Fill cupcake holders 3/4 full. Bake 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
Cool a few minutes in the cupcake tin before removing to a wire rack. Cool completely before frosting.
Cream cheese frosting
The amount of sugar varies from recipe to recipe, I always go for less sugar. You don’t need it.
1 8-ounce package of cream cheese
1/2 stick butter, softened
1-1/2 cups powdered sugar
For lemon frosting:
Zest of one lemon
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
For peppermint frosting:
1 teaspoon peppermint extract
6 hard peppermint candies, chopped fine
Beat cream cheese, butter, and sugar until smooth. Evenly divide into two separate bowls.
For the lemon frosting: stir in lemon zest, lemon juice, and vanilla. If the icing looks runny, add a bit more powdered sugar until it stiffens up. Chill about 20 minutes before frosting.
For the peppermint frosting: add the peppermint extract and blend. Chill about 20 minutes before frosting. Sprinkle finely chopped peppermint candies on top of each frosted cupcake.
Related posts: Proper English Scones, Snowman Cupcakes only a child could love, Three kinds of fondue, Green bean casserole, Civil War recipes: Hardtack crackers and Confederate Johnny Cake
mmm, reads and looks yummy! I spent last Sunday afternoon baking some of the traditional German Christmas cookies that are part of my family’s tradition. Summer here is quite cool so far, so this was a bonus. Try spending 4 hours baking cookies in the oven, while the world around you is at least 30º C (86º F) … The weekend weather seems to be rainy, so it will continue cool for the next baking session. :o)
Greetings from Rio de Janeiro (for those who were wondering) ;o)
Hooray for Christmas magic, and gingerbread people!
Kendra-
Delightful story! I’d love to join your family for Christmas morning GINGER bread- people. Mmmmm.
Love the snow flakes and the sharing.
Ginger
Cute, Ginger! 🙂
Everything sounds yummy! And this year you should take a picture of the mutant gingerbread people and share post Christmas! 🙂 Have a great Christmas, Kendra!
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I just loved everything about this blog HURRAY for gingerbread in every form and hurray for the molasses trade and American independence. Maybe gingerbread in some form should be the new 4th cake..What is so great about perfect g. men? I’m for individuality and credit for effort at 6am But I will try harder Cape Cod Chatterer
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“Revolutionary gingerbread cupcakes with lemon cream cheese frosting Kitchen Report” was in
fact definitely pleasurable and beneficial! In the present
day world that is hard to manage. I am grateful, Chauncey