Favorite Trader Joe’s Item #12: Gingerbread Cake Mix
The combo of these four main ingredients
made these wonderfully scrumptious babies (Gingerbread Cupcakes with Pumpkin Cream Cheese Frosting)
I had to make cupcakes for a dinner party this Saturday. I figured I’d whip out some cupcakes with the box of Gingerbread cake mix I recently bought from Trader Joe’s. The directions on the box did not specify how long the baking time would be for cupcakes. I started with 15 minutes and worked my way up from there. I think the total baking time was in the 25 minute range.
Here they are fresh out of the oven. The mix made only 10 of them. Fortunately that was 4 more than I needed to bring:
While I was making my cream cheese frosting I got the idea to put pumpkin butter in the mix. That cute little jar was sitting there on my counter teasing me to use it. So I thought— why not??? I ended up putting like 5 heaping tablespoons in total. I had to add some pumpkin spice mix just cuz I’m waaaaay into spice. It is that time of year after all.
I think seeing bits of cinnamon and nutmeg is actually pretty. Kinda reminds me of vanilla bean specks:
Here’s my work in progress:
Because the pumpkin butter thinned the frosting out a bit, I had to play around with the powdered sugar level to make it thicker. I had every intention to write how many cups I used, but the shear stress of trying not to get powdered sugar everywhere distracted me.
I ended up having frosting that was slightly runny, but it made for a neat effect. I probably should have chilled it*slightly* before I frosted the cupcakes.
For the final touch, I topped them with the uncrystallized ginger……
They packed TONS of flavor 🙂 I’ll definitely make them again. Perhaps next time I’ll fill them with the pumpkin butter and just have plain cream cheese frosting……I still have some frosting left!!
