Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Frosting

Brooke had a very specific request for her birthday dessert - chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter cream cheese frosting. I've never heard of peanut butter cream cheese frosting but figured I'd wing it - how bad could it be? Actually, it's very very good. Like delicious. Just about the perfect cupcake. I don't know if she thought the idea up herself or saw it somewhere, but turned out to be a great call.

I made 24 chocolate doctored cupcakes (add an additional egg, substitute melted butter for the oil and milk instead of water, add a teaspoon of vanilla, and a scoop of sour cream); for 12 of them I spooned 2 tablespoons of batter into cupcake liners, put a mini reese's peanut butter cup in the center, topped with another tablespoon of batter. For the other 12 I left out the reese's and went with straight chocolate cake.

For the frosting - the 12 plain chocolate cupcakes were frosted with a big scoop of vanilla buttercream frosting (side note: did you see yesterday's tip for clear vanilla? It's the way to go for white frosting); the 12 that have the reese's baked in got frosted with this peanut butter cream cheese frosting, garnished with another reese's mini cup and some chocolate sprinkles. Yum.


Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Frosting:

6 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
3 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 t. vanilla
2-3 tablespoons whip cream (or milk)
pinch of salt

Beat the cream cheese and peanut butter together until smooth. Add the vanilla and salt. Alternate adding powdered sugar and whip cream (or milk) until you get the correct consistency for spreading.

Note: this frosting was firm when I frosted the cupcakes but after being out for a while in a warm room it got soft and wanted to slide off the cupcakes! Next time I'll keep them chilled until it's time to serve them - not the best choice for sitting out for hours.

Mummy Cupcakes

Need some Halloween cupcake ideas for any upcoming parties? Or just 'cuz you want to make cute cupcakes haha? I have 3 cute and easy ones to share with you over the next couple days...they are all about the decorating, not the baking. Start with your favorite cupcake - these are devil's food boxed mix doctored up with an extra egg, replace the water with milk, add a teaspoon of vanilla and handful of mini chocolate chips.

To make each mummy I frosted with my chocolate buttercream frosting (see below), add 2 candy eyes, then pipe white buttercream frosting in strips across the top (I used a #104 piping tip).

Buttercream frosting: using a mixer, beat 1 stick of unsalted room temperature butter with about 3 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and a few tablespoons of heavy cream (or milk) until fluffy. Add more sugar or cream for spreading consistency.

Chocolate Buttercream: follow the above recipe adding cocoa powder (probably 1/4 to 1/3 cup).

one year ago: Mickey's 2 ingredient pumpkin spice cookies
two years ago: no sew trick or treat bag

Two Toned Swirly Frosting by Brooke

Watch Brooke frost vanilla cupcakes using this cool trick for making 2 colored swirly frosting - so clever! I'm very impressed :)

I don't have any pics of the cupcakes but here is a cake she did using the same technique:

Cookie Dough Cupcakes

Here is the other cupcake that I made at my nieces' request (in addition to the Rolo cupcakes I posted earlier, click here to see them) - I would never have made these if she didn't send me the recipe and beg, it didn't sound good to me at all. Doesn't it just sound dry to have a cookie in the middle of your cupcake? Well I'm glad I made them - they are good! You freeze cookie dough balls for a couple hours until they are hard, then drop them onto the cupcake batter and bake. Since the cookie dough is frozen first it doesn't bake all the way, so it's still soft cookie dough inside the cupcake! How clever, and delish!

I used a yellow cake mix; instead of using oil though I replaced it with melted butter and added a dash of vanilla to give it a little more "homemade" taste. Frosted with traditional buttercream, then topped with chocolate sprinkles and mini chocolate chips. Oh, and I didn't make the cookie dough like the recipe, I used a tube of premade cookie dough - truthfully I had my doubts about how this cupcake would turn out and didn't want to waste homemade cookie dough on it! But the store bought dough worked great and saved me some time - I will do it that way in the future. Click here for the recipe.

drop frozen cookie dough balls onto the cupcake batter

yum!

cookie dough and rolo cupcakes.