I am getting festive, and I'm going to do some baking because everyone loves to bake around this time of year

I'm working with Waitrose in this video as part of their new Christmas campaign Christmas together

Which is essentially everyone coming together friends family strangers and making the most of the Christmas season

Whether thats with cooking, baking,

Or simply just having fun christmas is a time for everyone to be together and that is exactly

What Waitrose wants to get across which I think is lovely

so in this video i'm gonna be making some gingerbread fairy light cupcakes

I've done this recipe before on my blog

But I'm mixing up the decoration a little bit because I saw a really cool picture on Pinterest

That I'm going to attempt to copy because it looks really cool and very magical very Christmassy

So let's get started first thing you want to do is pre-heat your oven to 175 degrees Celsius

get yourself a baking tin or a cupcake baking tin and

Fill it with your chosen cupcake cases. I've gone for gold because I think it's quite Christmassy

Perfect okay now you're all prepared. It's time to start mixing

Which is the messy job, but also the fun job, so I'm going to pop that to one side

If you're planning on doing any baking around Christmas season

Get organized get all your ingredients out make sure that all around you

So you're not like scrambling through cupboards trying to find things if it's all there out front of you

It makes it much more simpler and much more enjoyable right I've got my trusty KitchenAid first thing

I'm gonna do is cream together the butter and the sugar

so

Let's get our mixing bowl and our scales

I've got my butter here and

We need 75 grams of butter

That's 96 so I'll take some off

There we go pop that to the side because you will need it for later. I'm now gonna pop the butter in the KitchenAid

Now we need to weigh out the sugar and we need 100 grams of caster sugar

Now you've done that you want to cream that together, so it's all nice and soft and smooth

Next thing you need to add to the butter and sugar is your treacle we need 125

Milliliters of treacle I can appreciate measuring up treacle is not the easiest

There we go

Don't lick treacle out of the thing it's not like golden syrup. It doesn't taste good

It tastes rank if you just eat it out of the bin trust me. I think I did that last time

Pour that in

There we go, made a right old mess

Next thing you need to do is crack in one large egg and one large egg yolk

I am using the Waitrose free-range eggs all their eggs are free-range which is good

And it's always nicer

I think to use larger eggs in baking

So the second egg you do only want the yolk so you need to do a little bit of

egg dancing

There we go happy with that, in it goes perfect now you want to give that a good mix

Doesn't look too appetizing right now, but trust me it will be lovely

Now in a separate Bowl you want to mix together all your dry ingredients, so I'm going to move the eggs away

So you want 175 grams of plain flour

I always shake my whole body when I get flour out

I'm like

Okay

cocoa powder

Here

We want 1 tablespoon of cocoa powder

In it goes you then want to add 1 teaspoon of baking powder

Now it's time to add all your spices which make the cake tastes absolutely

Amazing this is what for me makes this feel like a very Christmassy recipe because it's very warming and spicy and just delicious

Basically so the first spice you want to add to your dry mixture is ginger

And you want to add one and a quarter teaspoon of ginger. I think ginger is my favorite spice

hundred percent

one and a quarter

There we go the next spice you want to add is cinnamon and you want to add one teaspoon of cinnamon

It's like Christmas you could literally just smell that all day

There we go the next one that you want to add is mixed spice or allspice and you want to add half a teaspoon of that

And

Then lastly you want to grab some ground nutmeg

Which also whoa that smells so much stronger in this than it does when you bake with it. Whoa. again

You want to add half the teaspoon of that?

Now you're all spiced up spice up your life we're never done

I'm also going to add a quarter of a teaspoon of salt as well

And that is all your dry ingredients now in a bowl you then want to add it to your wet ingredients and

You just want to mix this until it's just combined you don't want to over beat it

I've got spices up my nose these are going to be delicious

Okay for this next bit you want to grab yourself a

Saucepan just a little one and pop it on a small hole and you want to use

125 milliliters of

milk

All right

Since this measuring jug is too big, so I don't know I've just made a guess

And you want to pour it in a saucepan

And

You just want to really carefully heat up the milk being careful not to boil it. That's the last thing you want

The milk is now hot, so I'm going to add that into the mixture

very gently

Add a little bit and I'm gonna

This is when the mixture starts to look so delicious

just gonna use my spatula

And make sure I've got everything of the edges

Now you have your absolutely delicious looking cake mixture, it's time to spoon it into your cupcake cases

two spoons

One for spooning

One for pushing it into the cupcake cases

Now all you have to do is pop these in your oven for around

20 minutes or until they are springy to touch a little bit more golden on the outside and tidy up your kitchen

We don't have much longer on the cupcakes

but whilst they're still in the oven I'm gonna start on making the buttercream icing this is literally a simple buttercream icing recipe and

This is just a general one that I tend to follow so for this you will need

240 grams of unsalted butter

Let's see how much this is

171 so we do need another

Oh 245

Perfect you want to beat this until it is really light in colour

so basically until it goes from yellow to white

Cakes are out now you need to put these on a cooling tray

Until they are actually cool not like a little bit warm, or I don't have time

I'm going to fit the icing onto a warm, hot cake wait till they're cold, otherwise your cakes will look really bad

I do think the one thing you need to have patience for like a hundred percent

Mark, I'm talking to you now

These are on the cooling rack I'm gonna leave these

Just there to the side

Whilst I carry on with the butter icing I've been mixing this for around five minutes

I'm just gonna do once more just scraping all the butter off the edge

Just to make sure we've got every little bit, and it's as creamy as possible

Okay, I'm now going to measure out 400 grams of icing sugar into a bowl

There we go

it's essentially nearly the entire box and

You're just going to very gently cream the butter and add little bits of icing sugar as you go

hmm smells so good

Now you're going to want to add two teaspoons of vanilla I have some vanilla bean paste one

And two

Then you want to add four tablespoons of milk although

I would do this gradually so you can see whether the consistency of the icing is how you want it

So I'll maybe do two first

Mix that

this looks so great

Should I try a little bit

Hmm honestly, I think this is the best buttercream icing I've ever made

oh, one more tablespoon

Okay, I'm going in for my fourth tablespoon

Now what my cakes are completely cool

I've got the writing chocolate in a glass of boiling water, so that's nice and melted now

It's time to do my favorite bit. Which is to ice the cupcakes

Just going to cut the end of my piping bag off

And pop my nozzle in

And then fold your bag over

And start filling it

Right I am going to start from the outside and work my right in so that I can make like a point

I've decided to go with M&Ms because they are the brightest colors and for this because we're doing like some fairy lights

Needs to be bright so oh

That wasn't as smooth as I thought it was gonna be I thought it was just gonna go ahh

My writing chocolate has fully melted you could cut the end off

You want to start and kind of just go all the way around to the top

Don't know how easy this is gonna be with chocolate. Let's just give this a go

There we go perfect one done

Okay

I Quite like it when it goes a wiggly

It looks like proper fairy lights you know what I mean

Okay

Chocolate is done

I actually do think this is going to taste much nicer because we've used chocolate not

Writing icing so you want to get your M&Ms, and then you just want to stick them in

Very light

Okay, and there you go. These are my

Definitely don't look quite as good as the Pinterest version, but I'm really happy with them, and they are very delicious cupcakes

I will leave all the

Ingredients and the links and sources to everything down below if you guys want to recreate these in time for Christmas

Don't forget to share your photos or videos of your together moments using the hashtag Christmas together

I think that's gonna be such a lovely positive hashtag, and I can't wait to see what you guys post in it

I also can't wait to see if you decide to make these they'll probably look better than mine

but I'm excited to see them give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it, and I will see you again very soon I

Really want to eat one of these should I try I'm gonna try one guys

Gingerbread cupcake

I've got it all around my mouth?

Oh my

These are the best things I've ever made