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Friday, July 18, 2008

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Cupcakes

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To shake things up a bit, Dan recommended this week's cupcake be chocolate cake. I rarely dabble in chocolate cake because Daniel isn't a huge fan of chocolate, but as these are not for him, I took his suggestion and decided to go with it. My Vanilla Cupcake recipe came from Billy Reece, so I stuck with him to see how his Chocolate Cupcakes are.
Now, what to pair with chocolate cupcakes... chocolate frosting? Too much chocolate. Vanilla? Boring. Strawberry? No, we know how strawberry jam frosting came out last time, and I don't have any fresh strawberries. So I went with the classic Chocolate Peanut Butter combination. To make the cupcakes more exciting, I baked a mini reese's cup right into the cupcake. Other than that, I kept the same basic recipe, just played around a bit with the measurements a little so I wouldn't wind up with 24 cupcakes. I scaled it down as such to make 9:

Chocolate Buttermilk Cupcakes with Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Center based on Billy's Reece's Chocolate Cupcakes
2/3 C Cake Flour
1/3 Tsp Baking Soda
6.5 Tablespoons of butter
1/3 C Sugar
1/3 C Packed light brown sugar
1 egg
2 oz unsweetened chocolate, melted & let cool for 15 minutes
1/3 C Buttermilk
1/3 Tsp Vanilla
9 Mini Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, chilled in freezer for about 30 minutes.

Preheat to 350. Cream the butter & both types of sugars together. Add the egg and scrape down the sides of the bowl (if you don't have a super cool SideSweep like me:) ). Add the melted/cooled chocolate and mix until incorporated. Scrape down sides of bowl. In a small bowl, combine the cake flour & baking soda, and in a measuring cup, combine the buttermilk and vanilla extract. Alternately, add the flour mixture and the buttermilk mixture to the chocolate mixture, beginning and ending with the flour mixture.
Spray cupcake tins with non-stick spray, and fill cupcake wells 2/3 full. Remove peanut butter cups from the freezer, unwrap, and press into the batter in the cupcake tins so that the top of the peanut butter cup just peeks out of the batter.
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Bake 20 minutes, or when it springs back lightly when touched and a tooth pick comes out clean. Turn out from cupcake tin onto cooling rack.
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No, those aren't chocolate belly buttons on my cupcakes!

For the frosting, I found a Fluffy Peanut Butter Frosting Recipe at Allrecipes.com. The reviews were good, and looked promising for a sturdy, pipe-able peanuty frosting. I halved it, and added a few steps since I only had crunchy peanut butter on hand:

Peanut Butter Frosting
1/2 Stick of butter, soft
1/2 C Crunchy Peanut Butter
1 1/2 Tbl milk
1 C confectioner's sugar

Put peanut butter in a food processor and pulse until most of the big peanut chunks are broken up. Add the butter, and pulse until full incorporated and peanut chunks are further broken up. Scoop into bowl of an electric mixer. Gradually mix in the sugar. As it gets thicker and thicker, add milk as needed to get the correct consistency.

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The chocolate cake gets moister the second day, and are quite dry the first day they are baked, just as I've found is true for Billy's Vanilla Cupcake recipe. The frosting piped rather well, and was very very peanut buttery. You couldn't really taste the reese's cup amidst all the other chocolate and peanut butter flavor, but I suppose its cool to just know that they're in there. Think they'll be a hit?

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19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmmm Yummy.

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Anonymous said...

these look really good and it's a very creative idea. i may have to try something similar.

Robin said...

Oh My Word! My family would love these! I love chocolate and peanut butter, a great celebrity couple!

Anonymous said...

Two great tastes that taste great together - well done! I had a peanut butter & jelly cupcake yesterday, but your chocolate peanut butter ones look like they would win in a landslide. Beautiful pics, too.

A said...

So I always see this awesome piping job you make on your cupcakes. Do you have like a how-to post on piping?

My Sweet & Saucy said...

Now these are my kind of cupcakes!

Anonymous said...

o.m.g. these look like trouble!!!

Jeanine - The Baking Beauties said...

Oh wow, these cupcakes lack nothing! YUMMY!

Anonymous said...

Love the chocolate belly buttons!! :-)

Stephanie said...

Thank you for all the nice comments! :) And no, I don't have a how-to on piping, but thats a good idea! Its actually very simple, as long as you have the right consistency frosting, a plastic bag, and a large sized coupler and piping tip. It would be fun to do a picture-by-picture piping process post (say that 3 times fast). Actually I've been piping this same way for my cupcakes for a while now, and I'm looking to shake it up a little bit with new methods. Anyone have any advice?

Rindy R said...

ok - my two favorite favors in the whole world!! I might have to make me some of these!! Thanks for sharing.

Cathy - wheresmydamnanswer said...

Thank you in advance for the calories.. These look so great and I love the peanut butter cup surprise in the middle.

These are on the list of kick ass cupcakes to make!!

Cheers
Cathy
www.wheresmydamnanswer.com

Anonymous said...

These look absolutely amazing. I don't suppose they'd survive being mailed here? :)

Deborah said...

What great cupcakes! I'm a chocolate and peanut butter fan - and I love the idea of "hiding" a reece's cup in the middle.

Sarah said...

I made these and my roommates loooooooved them. Delicious!

Baking Housewife said...

wow you are a culinary queen!! I will definately try these, just as soon as i can find the mini Reeses peanut butter cups in the UK!

sara angel said...

chocolate + peanut butter = heaven. these look adorable!

Cherie said...

Those look heavenly!

Unknown said...

I needed these for a special -ed students I work with at school but I worried that big cupcakes where to much and that they would be to messy so I got a bag of the mini's and made mini cupcakes. They worked out great.

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