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!!