Gingerbread Buttercream

love gingerbread biscuits at Christmas (well all year round really, but they just feel “right” at Christmas), so when it came to thinking up a flavour for day 3 of my festive buttercream week I decided that it had to be gingerbread.

I’ve experimented with ginger buttercream before but never managed to get the flavour quite rich enough to really bring all the memories of gingerbread biscuits when eating it. I ended up pouring over gingerbread biscuit recipes thinking about what gives them their distinctive flavour and thinking about whether I could somehow shoehorn that into a smooth buttercream.

After much experimentation, I discovered that the secret to making a buttercream that tastes just like gingerbread was to add lots of ground ginger (obviously) and also a little black treacle. I’m traditional and stick to just ginger but I know some people prefer to add other spices such as cinnamon or nutmeg to their biscuits, so feel free to switch some of the ginger for these in the recipe if you prefer.

I’ve served this gingerbread buttercream on some of my vanilla cupcakes and they’re topped with some cute gingerbread man sprinkles that I found in Hobbycraft.

Ingredients
225 g butter soft at room temperature
450 g icing sugar
4 tbsp black treacle
1 tbsp ground ginger
A little milk
Instructions
Cut the butter (225g) into cubes and beat in an electric mixer on a low speed until soft.
Add the icing sugar (450g) and beat until fully combined – I prefer to add the sugar a couple of spoonfuls at a time as this minimises the amount of sugar that flies out all over the kitchen.
Add the black treacle (4 tbsp) a tbsp at a time and beat until fully combined.
Add the ground ginger (1 tbsp) and again beat until fully combined.
Check the consistency of your buttercream, if it seems a little too firm to pipe then add a little milk (no more than a tsp at a time) until you have the required consistency.

Tweet