Effing Delicious Ginger Cupcakes

I found this recipe for Rose and Ginger Cupcakes on the Martha Stewart website. There was a comment that the cupcake-to-glaze proportions were way off. I was quick to take the comment with NO grains of salt because I still have a massive container of Bailey’s frosting in my freezer from my Irish Car Bomb adventure and I’m pretty sick of amassing seemingly endless leftover frosting/icing. So, of course I halved what I already intended to make of the glaze (I was already halving the recipe overall). And if I made these cupcakes again, I would omit the glaze entirely.

The glaze was pink, so it had that much going for it.

I wouldn’t make it with the glaze at all because these cupcakes are best when plain and warm. They had been out of the oven for maybe fifteen or twenty minutes by the time I had distributed my lacking batch of glaze over maybe half of the cupcakes I made (it fell short) and sunk my teeth into one of the plain ones. As interesting and delectable as I found the rosewater taste to be, there is no replacement for the convergence of warm flavor of ginger and temperature warmth of a baked good fresh out of the oven. Unless you’re someone who doesn’t like ginger, in which case I guess there are plenty of replacements.

In the interest of full disclosure, it’s worth mentioning that slashing the glaze-to-cupcake proportion isn’t the only way I detracted from the original recipe. The original recipe calls for 3 egg whites; I put in 2 eggs. Yolks and whites. Technically, it should have been 1.5 egg whites, but it was after a long day and I was experiencing a small lapse of giving any fucks. I used all-purpose flour instead of cake flour for similar reasons.

I also added more candied ginger than was called for: something I would strongly recommend you do if you like ginger as much as I do. The bag of crystallized ginger chips I was using was already open. When I went to measure out the tablespoon that the recipe prescribed, I reinterpreted the measurement to…the whole bag (because I have boundary issues?). Like I said, the bag was already open, but a good 5 or 6 ounces went tumbling into the bowl of the stand mixer. AND IT TURNED OUT FUCKING DELICIOUS.

The glaze, mind you, wasn’t gross or anything. It tasted interesting, and if you’re going to dismiss my testimonies of the awesomeness that is these cupcakes when they are plain, then do so with the knowledge that you’re not going to want to halve anything. You especially won’t want to halve the batch of glaze if you want it to flush out with the top of the cupcake wrapper like in the picture on the original recipe.