So anyway - here I was planning his party and I ask him, "Do you want a cake? or Cupcakes? What kind do you want? He pondered for a bit and comes back with, "Chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting!" Now I know that Reeses' are his all time favorite candy bar, but really? Peanut Butter Frosting? Not gonna make it easy on me, are ya? Hey at least I have pinterest!
To back up a bit - since it is way past his party (which was on the third) and his birthday, for his party I ended up making him a Reeses type treat that I found on Pinterest: Easy No Bake Reeses Peanut Butter Bars (this link goes directly to the website offering the recipe). They were a big hit, though a few of my family members told me I could get a box from, Jello, I think - to make the same thing. I personally am a little skeptical, and the more I bake the more I like knowing that I made something from scratch. Not that I am against box items - as you will see - I am just trying to learn to be less dependent on them.
I put off making these cupcakes until I knew that he could enjoy more of them all to himself. I found the recipe to make a super yummy Peanut Butter Frosting from Redbook. So here is my tale of baking the perfect cupcake (they could have been better, but he loved them) for my husband in his birthday month.
To start, I picked up a box for the chocolate cake. I would love to learn how to make a chocolate cake from scratch - and I will .. but I was already experimenting with the frosting - I didn't want to push my luck.
This part of the recipe is easy enough - what is there to do but throw in a couple of ingredients and mix it all up. The part I run into difficulty is getting the batter into the cups. I know to use an ice cream scoop - but, of course I have a scoop that is not perfectly round. It is flatter to cause the ice cream to curl into perfect balls as you scoop. I should have taken a picture. Because of this - and perhaps because of my waning patience - I end up with less than perfect cupcakes.
I end up with come of the cupcakes being larger than they should be, and
Some that are better referred to as - mini-cupcakes. And I am always missing at least one by the time I am finished with the batter. But hey - at least that was easy enough - and who needs perfect cupcakes??
Now it was time to make that super yummy frosting! The recipe calls for sifted powderred sugar. This is part of the reason it took so long before I got them made for my husband, as I needed to get over to walmart and pick up a sifter. Or - at least I thought I did.
If you look in the background of the first picture you will see an old sifter (from 50s or 60s I think) in my display cabinet. This goes to show you how much I actually sift ... I didn't even realize I had it - and it took me a good two weeks between deciding to pick up a sifter and actually buying one. However, when you look down in there you will see the modern sifter has 3 layers of sifting whereas my display sifter has only one. I put the old sifter back on display :-)
If you are a peanut butter fan you will love making this frosting. First you mix the peanut butter and butter .. and you get this creamy goodness. It certainly isn't thick enough - or just plain not enough - to ice all of the cupcakes.
But, after adding the sugar and milk you get some peanut butter perfection! Not only does it smell great - but it tastes just as good. This is a nice and simple recipe that I will be using over and over again. In fact, the husband gobbled up all of the extra while I was picking up our daughter from her after school activity. He already had to share the cupcakes with her - he didn't want to share the extra icing too!
No - I do not own something to squeeze the icing out with - so I end up with this mess - though my step-sister-in-law did give me an idea on how to work around that in the future! It is a tasty mess - so I am not too worried, though upon reflection I think it would be better with a more 'chocolatey' cake. Something along the lines of a Devil's Food mix - or from scratch even! Regardless - I think I will be making this cupcake in our house again very soon! It got thumbs up all around.
