Peanut Butter and White Chocolate Cupcakes

Yummy!

So, since I created this blog, I got all excited and couldn't wait to get started but then real life caught up with me and kept me busy. Plus this blogging is all a bit daunting, I mean, what do you start off with? I couldn’t think properly and then it came to me last week... I was craving peanut butter!

Now I love peanut butter, the crunchy version obviously; it reminds me of when I was younger when I used to have peanut butter and syrup sandwiches for my packed lunch at school.  Nowadays, I like to think I have advanced onto peanut butter and nutella on toast. And, since I love cupcakes just as much it’s a match made in heaven, well I think so anyway. They’re ever so easy to make as well…

I suppose I should say, I’m no professional baker, I just have a passion for getting stuck in the kitchen making cakes or biscuits. I've been casually baking since a teenager, but now I'm definitely going to do this more often! HA!

The key point for any baking is to use REAL butter, it does actually give a richer, creamier texture and that’s what’s really important.

Ingredients:

For the cupcakes:-

115g butter
130g light brown sugar
3 eggs
200g all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
60ml whole milk
60g white chocolate chips
2 tblsp crunchy peanut butter
 
Preheat the oven to 170C or gas mark 4. Line a muffin tin with 12 cupcake liners.

Using a hand beater or if you are lucky enough to have an food mixer, beat the butter and sugar for a few minutes until light and fluffy, the sugar will actually lighten. This takes about 4 minutes or so. Add the eggs, one at a time beating quite thoroughly after each addition.
Sieve the flour, baking powder and salt and add half to the egg mixture. Beat until combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and pour in half the milk. Beat again until combined and repeat the flour and milk process. Add white chocolate chips and the peanut butter and using your spatula gently fold into the mixture.

Immediately, fill the cupcake liners – this mixture is enough to make 24 cupcakes.

Bake for about 20 minutes but check often. If you have a gas oven, you will need to turn the cupcakes around after 10 minutes to ensure evenly cooked and browned.

Remove from oven and place cupcakes on a wire rack to cool. Don’t leave them in the muffin tin as they will sweat and get soggy!

Ensure cupcakes are completely cooled before adding the icing.

The smell of hot peanut butter is just so enticing...

For the icing:-

250g icing sugar
125g butter
2 tblsp whole milk
1 tblsp peanut butter
White chocolate for decorating

With your hand mixer or food processor, cream butter and icing sugar until smooth. This will look more like a dough mixture than icing, but don’t worry. Add the milk 1tblsp at a time and peanut butter. If mixture still feels too stiff add some more milk. If you want to pipe the frosting, I usually use the largest star one, this gives a lovely swirl effect.

However, my piping bag decided to explode on me – so I had to make this mixture all over again and ice by hand, painstaking! Fear not, I shall soon be off to Lakeland to purchase a lovely new icing set, every cloud and all that…. J

Finish off with white chocolate chips or shavings and enjoy!

Finally got a use for my cakestand!