Gingerbread Cupcakes

Meg over at Megan's Munchies has been on a pumpkin kick. She made some yummy looking Pumpkin Drop Biscuits I wanted to make, but I am fresh out of pumpkin puree after cooking grandmas birthday cake. While blog surfing, I came across a gingerbread cupcake recipe I felt would fix my sweet tooth.

I have been cooking with butter all together way too much lately so I replaced the butter in the recipe with applesauce. I was a little worried about doing that, but it turned out to be a good call. They were a little chewier than I expected, but it didn't hurt the overall taste and texture.

At the holidays I make a gingerbread loaf from my Williams Sonoma cookbook that calls for crystallized ginger and is nice and spicy. This recipe gets a 3 on the spice scale...it definitely could have used additional ginger for a bite back.

Gingerbread Cupcakes:

5 tablespoons butter, softened

3/4 cup white sugar

1/2 cup molasses2 eggs

1/2 cup milk

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons ground ginger

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease or line a 12-cup muffin tin with cupcake papers.

Cream the butter and sugar together in large mixing bowl. Add molasses, eggs and milk and blend well.

Sift together the flour, spices, baking soda and salt.

Add the flour mixture to the creamed mixture and stir until just combined. (This cupcake pan is one of my absolute favorites. I got it from Williams Sonoma a year or two ago. It is the cutest pan EVER!!!)

Pour the batter evenly into the prepared tin.6. Bake at 350 degrees 18-20 minutes. Remove cupcakes to cooling rack. Frost when completely cooled.

I got lazy and opted to not frost these babies. I did have everything ready to make the frosting. I even pulled out my neato mechanical frosting bag with the intention of making green frosting so I could pipe stems and leaves on these little pumpkins. Maybe it was because I already frosted one cake this week, but the frosting never came to fruition. They still tasted yummy!

When I was dusting the cupcakes with powdered sugar I told Alex I thought it looked like it was snowing. He said it looked more like dandruff...Where's the Head and Shoulders?