peanut butter perfection

Today I thought I'd share a little background on me and my cooking/baking...

I've never taken home ec.  I've never had a cooking class.  I'm completely self-taught and the biggest motivator is that I'm a VERY picky eater.  Recipes that I don't particularly care for I will work on until they can tickle my taste buds.  This one is no different.  I love peanut butter and chocolate together, but as I've said before I'm not a big fan of chocolate cake.  I researched and tried many from scratch chocolate cake recipes before I found one that i could amend to my liking, and then the hard part - adding the peanut butter to work well with it as a standalone cupcake.  Then I worked on the frosting, and was inspired by the local grocery store's chopped reese's peanut butter cups as a garnish on top of chocolate cupcakes.  It finally all came together a couple weekends ago and I must say, this one is so, so good.  Pair it with a tall, cold glass of milk and you have a dessert to die for.

peanut butter and chocolate cupcakes

1 cup flour
1 cup sugar
3/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/3 cup hershey's unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup vegetable oil or vegetable shortening
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
1/2 cup hot water

frosting:
1 cup creamy peanut butter
1/2 cup sweet cream salted butter, melted
4 cups confectioner's sugar
1/3 cup half and half

garnish:
reese's peanut butter chips
8 reese's peanut butter cups, chilled and chopped


1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
2. Combine and stir the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, cocoa powder, and salt in a large bowl.
3. In another bowl, combine together the egg, milk, oil, and vanilla with a hand mixer.  Add peanut butter.  Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients until you can get them as smooth as you can.  Add the hot water and continue mixing until all are mixed together.
3. Prepare a cupcake pan with baking cups (I use foil lined cups for best results).  Fill cups 3/4 full.  bake for 15-18 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean.  Do not overbake.  Let cool before frosting.

4. For the frosting: using a hand mixer combine all 4 ingredients til smooth.  If needed, add additional half and half to get it smooth.  Garnish with chips and chopped peanut butter cups.  Side note:  after several attempts I found the most aesthetic way to frost them was to hand frost, then hand pipe frosting in the center, only about 2/3 out.  Then when the garnish is added, it looks so much nicer.

Makes 12-16 cupcakes.  Enjoy! =)