Tag Archives: peanut butter

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes

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Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Filling and Peanut Butter Frosting

This past weekend, Rob and I went up to Scarsdale to visit some friends. They have three children, two of which are at cupcake-eating age. The last time we visited, I brought Pumpkin Whoopie Pies, which the kids loved. This time around, I decided to bring cupcakes.

Most people are huge fans of the chocolate and peanut butter combo. I like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups as much as the next person, but in baked goods, it’s not my favorite flavor combo. But it’s a popular one and proves to be endlessly popular with kids. So I found a recipe and went to work.

The chocolate cupcake and peanut butter/cream cheese filling came from My Man’s Belly (I skipped her peanut butter/white chocolate ganache and chocolate frosting in favor of just peanut butter frosting).

I have two recommendations if you use this recipe:

1.) Fill the cupcake liners only halfway full because they puff up like crazy and will overflow.

2.) When you scoop out the middles of the cupcakes after baking for 15 minutes, DO NOT reuse that batter to cover over the peanut butter/cream cheese filling. I ended up with 18 cupcakes and almost enough new batter to cover them. I would recommend only making 15 cupcakes and using the leftover new batter to cover the middles.

I reused the partially baked batter, and when the cupcakes baked for their final 15 minutes, that batter didn’t look so hot. It tasted fine, but it wasn’t nearly as pretty as the cupcakes that used brand new batter on top. Just a suggestion.

Of course, frosting covers all sins, and the cupcakes turned out pretty good looking, if I do say so myself.

Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Filling and Peanut Butter Frosting

The cupcakes were a big hit with everyone who had one. Our friends’ eldest daughter worked on hers and proclaimed that “the frosting is the bestest part.” I had a few leftover that I gave to another friend of ours here in Brooklyn on Sunday night. A few hours later, he posted on my Facebook page “the Oscar for best peanut butter cupcakes goes to…”

I aim to please, folks. Aim to please.

Week Five: (Mostly) Vegan Peanut Butter Bombs

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(This recipe came from a now out-of-print book called “The Damn Tasty! Vegan Baking Guide” by Kris Holechek.)

This week I decided to try a recipe at which my friend Jennifer Prochilo seems to excel. She continuously posts photos of these chocolate-y cookies called Peanut Butter Bombs that I really wanted to try.

I am not the biggest fan of the chocolate/peanut butter combo. I like Reese’s Pieces but find that Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are better in moderation (and frozen! They absolutely must be frozen!). But I know most people enjoy that combo, especially my grandmother, so I decided to make a batch and take some to her for her 82nd birthday this week.

They’re mostly vegan because I’m not sure if the chocolate chips I bought were vegan or not. As it wasn’t important for them to be entirely vegan, I didn’t really try that hard to find chips that I was sure were vegan.

The recipe started with a chocolate dough that consisted of flour, baking soda, cocoa powder, soy milk, margarine, white sugar, brown sugar and vanilla:
Chocolate dough

Next was a peanut butter dough made with peanut butter, powdered sugar and the chocolate chips:
Peanut butter dough

The chocolate dough was rolled into a ball and then flattened out into a disc. The peanut butter dough was then rolled into a slightly smaller ball and put in the middle of the chocolate dough, which was then folded over the peanut butter:
Peanut butter innards

This is the point where I started having problems. Jennifer’s Peanut Butter Bombs are always pure chocolate on the outside. The peanut butter is completely hidden and a surprise for the eater. The peanut butter in my cookies kept leaking out the seams. I could not get the peanut butter completely encased in the chocolate:
Peanut Butter Bombs

My cookies were not sophisticated enough to be called “bombs”. So I’m renaming this recipe Peanut Butter IEDs (no disrespect to all you military folks out there, of course).

They tasted all right though:
Peanut Butter Bomb

And I think my grandma enjoyed her gift:
Gift-wrapped Peanut Butter Bombs

Tune in next week for Vegan Vanilla and Chocolate Cupcakes! Week Seven will turn back on the animal-product highway after my little detour down Vegan Boulevard, but I’m sure I’ll be making a few more pit stops in the next year.