_{Village cake tin: £40.00, Culture Vulture}

Christmas isn’t far around the corner – less than 3 months away. I came across this village cake tin on the Culture Vulture website and thought that it would be perfect for making special festive cupcakes. Something like the lovely ginger cupcake recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook… with white glitter icing dribbled down the roofs to look like snow! Mmmm… I can taste them now!

If I’ve whetted your appetite, here’s the recipe! (Makes 12)

120g plain flour
140g caster sugar
pinch of salt
40g unsalted butter at room temp
1 ½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp allspice
120ml whole milk
1 egg
¼ tsp vanilla essence
200g stem ginger in syrup, finely chopped

• Pre-heat the oven to 170°C/325°F
• Lightly grease the cake tin with butter or vegetable oil
• Combine the dry ingredients and butter into a mixing bowl and beat with an electric whisk (or free-standing mixer) on a slow speed until you get a sandy consistency and everything is combined
• Slowly pour half the milk into the mixture, beating until all the ingredients are well mixed. Beat the egg, vanilla essence and rest of the milk together and add to the batter
• Scrape any unmixed ingredients from the side with a spatula and mix until everything is well combined
• Add the chopped ginger to the batter and stir through
• Spoon the mixture into the paper moulds until ⅔ full and bake for 20 minutes
• While the cakes are cooking, add an equal amount of water to the ginger syrup, then boil down to half quantity. When the cupcakes come out of the oven, turn out of the moulds and spoon some of the ginger syrup on top of the still hot cupcakes (you could pierce the cupcakes a few times with a toothpick to aid absorption!)