Gingerbread Cupcakes with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

I love the holidays! More reasons to bake, and an introduction of spices that tend to be too "powerful" for spring and summer flavors: allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, and ground cloves! I just love the aroma of fresh baked holiday goodies! This recipe comes from the need to make a dessert and bring it to a staff Christmas party at church. Since it's a Christmas party, I decided to go with a Christmas flavor: Gingerbread! I Googled, I Yahooed, and I SwagBucked my way through recipe after recipe that would produce the flavor and look for what I wanted. I found it at Epicurious, which is a site I've used a bit for recipes. My husband has only had bits of cupcakes from this recipe but couldn't get enough and cannot WAIT to try the whole cupcake on Friday. A few modifications: the recipe from Epicurious calls for candied ginger, but just as a topping, so I ditch that because it's kind of pricey around here... Also the recipe on Epicurious tends to jump around, so remember: this is the way I did it!! One more thing: read the directions all the way through before attempting. As contrary to almost all of the recipes on this site, the baking soda DOES NOT go into the flour mixture!!