PB Chocolate Cupcakes

It’s my birthday, so I’m going to blog about the special extra cupcakes Jamie and I made. I was going to do that after I blogged about the winners anyway, but let’s pretend like this is a special gift to you all because it’s my birthday and not just because I like announcing my birthday everywhere. Moving on…

As part of the cupcake baking deal, Jamie said we had to make some with peanut butter and chocolate as that’s her favorite combo. I scoured some recipes and this one was the winner. Unfortunately, it involves cake mix, which is fine on some occasions, but not usually what I am down with. So I had to find another recipe for the chocolate cake part and it had to be one that was 12 cupcakes. I have a hard enough time getting rid of cupcakes normally and the idea of having 36 cupcakes total was not my idea of a good time. Or at least a healthy one. So I found this one and scaled down the other one…mostly. This happens to me occasionally. I forget I’m scaling down a recipe and one ingredient will stay at full strength. In this case, it was peanut butter, but I think that just made it better. Oh, and we got the wrong kind of Reese’s Cups because they have miniatures (fun size) and minis. We got the minis instead of the miniatures. Don't worry,  it worked out.

My other modification was a ¼ reduction in the frosting recipe. Since I was going for ½ size and because frosting recipes always make way too much, I cut it in half again and I’m glad I did. It was a reasonable amount of frosting.

Check these out because they are a killer combo.

Reese’s Cup Peanut Butter Cupcakes modified from 52 Cupcakes:

Makes 12 tasty cupcakes

For the cupcakes -
1/3 c. Dutch-process cocoa powder
½ c. boiling water
1 c. all-purpose flour
½ tsp. baking soda
6 Tb. unsalted butter, softened
½ c. sugar
½ tsp. vanilla extract
1 whole large egg
1 large egg yolk
½ c. creamy peanut butter
Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup minis

For the frosting –
¼ stick of butter, room temp
¼ c. shortening (Spectrum makes an awesome organic one)
1 c. confectioners sugar (sifted)
¼ tsp. vanilla
2 Tb. milk
1/8 c. cocoa powder
¼ c. creamy 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 12 cupcakes cups with paper liners. Place two peanut butter minis on the bottom of each paper liner.

In a small bowl whisk together the cocoa powder and the water until the cocoa powder is dissolved and let the mixture cool to room temperature. In a bowl whisk together the flour, the baking soda, and a pinch of salt. In another bowl with an electric mixer cream together the butter and the sugar and the vanilla extract and then beat in the whole egg and the egg yolk, beating until the mixture is combined well. Beat in the cocoa mixture alternately with the flour mixture, beating well after each addition, and then add the peanut butter and mix well.

Spoon 1/3 cup of batter on top of the mini peanut butter cups.

Bake the cupcakes until they spring back when lightly pressed with your finger. Check them after 15 minutes. They may take 17 minutes, depending on your oven temperature. Ours came out looking like brownies, which I thought was kind of rad. Let them cool completely before frosting.

To make the frosting, put all ingredients in a bowl and mix thoroughly. We decorated a few with more peanut butter cups. These make for a dense cupcake, most likely because of the extra peanut butter in it. They are very peanut buttery and the minis basically melted into the batter. I’d love to give these a try with the right amount of peanut butter and the right type of peanut butter cup, but overall, I think these were quite the tasty crowd pleaser.