Gingerbread Reindeer Cupcakes With Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting

I recently introduced my kids to design challenges on the Food Network, and they are hooked. Our new favorite is the Christmas Cookie Challenge. They love watching the bakers create designs. Suddenly plain desserts just won’t do, they must be cute too. So instead of making plain chocolate gingerbread cupcakes with cinnamon cream cheese frosting, we created gingerbread reindeer cupcakes. Thank goodness for Wilton who makes it easy for anyone to create cute cupcakes because my icing skills are not up to par.

Seriously, aren’t they the cutest? My kids certainly thought so, and they loved being able to help.

I just love the little bow. And later we realized that it would have been cute to use the bow as a bow tie for the boys, but most of the cupcakes were gone before that idea came up. Defiantly a cute idea though.

Gingerbread Reindeer Cupcakes

A lack of icing skills isn’t the only think I don’t have in common with the folks on the Christmas Cookie Challenge, I also like to cut corner when baking. (I know, I would be banned from the show – but I have three kids, I have to cut a few corners to get everything accomplished.)

I often begin baking with boxed cake mixes. Gasp! Ok, calm down. It’s so easy to grab your favorite boxed cake mix and turn it into something extra special. And I promise, if you don’t tell people — they will never know.

My Christmas Crinkle Cookies are another excellent example of an easy twist on boxed cake mix.

So grab your boxed chocolate cake mix, and let’s turn it into chocolate gingerbread cupcakes!

Ingredients – Cupcakes

• 1 box chocolate cake mix
• Water, vegetable oil and eggs called for on cake mix box
• ¼ cup molasses
• 2 tsp ground ginger
• 1 ½ tsp ground cinnamon
• ½ tsp ground cloves
• Gingerbread man cupcake liners
• Reindeer cupcake decorating kit

The reindeer decorating kit makes turning these into reindeer cupcakes easy – no special decorating skills required. You can make your cupcakes girl or boy reindeer with black noses or red noses like Rudolf. We made a variety of each.

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Prepare cupcake pan by lining it with cupcake wrappers or spraying with a non-stick spray.

In a large bowl, prepare the cake mix according to the instructions on the box. Then, add in the molasses, ginger, cinnamon and cloves and stir until well combined.

Scoop the cupcake batter into the liners, filling them about ½ way full. Bake for 18-20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Allow cupcakes to cool completely before frosting.

Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients – Frosting

• 4 cups powdered sugar
• 4 oz. cream cheese – softened
• 1 tbsp ground cinnamon
• ½ tsp vanilla extract
• 3-4 tbsp heavy cream

Prepare the frosting:

In a large mixing bowl, combine the cream cheese, cinnamon and vanilla extract and mix until nice and creamy. Slowly, add in the powdered sugar a little bit at a time. Then, add the heavy cream a tablespoon at a time, mixing well between. Keep adding the heavy cream until the desired consistency has been reached, either for spreading or piping.

For our reindeer cupcakes, we piped the frosting onto the cupcakes.

After Piping the frosting on the cupcakes, add the reindeer decorations to create reindeer cupcakes. Not only are these the cutest little reindeer on the dessert table, but they are delicious too.