Peanut butter cookies with honey buttercream

Its the weekend, its cold and rainy and I'm feeling a little poorly, so sitting on the sofa and watching telly, craving comfort food (again!). So I had a little ponder in my baking cupboard and was going to just make some peanut butter cookies on their own, then thought it would be much more tastier to make it with a cream filling... hmm, but what? I've read somewhere that peanut butter and honey is the new version of the peanut butter and jelly / syrup combo and they're not wrong. Its quite the match made in a dream baker's heaven. The ever so slight salty crunch of the peanut butter in the biscuit combined with the sweet buttercream makes this sound rather ambiguous, but honestly it works!

Chinese New Year cookies

So I'm a bit behind on this posting - I was trying to get this sorted for the start of the Chinese new year which is now about 2 weeks ago, but better late than never.

This particular chinese new year celebrates the year of the dragon - which is me. Apparently its supposed to be a good year for luck... I'm still waiting for that, but I shall be patient.

Every year in London, they have a celebration in Trafalgar Square and Soho. So off I went to brave the cold (and train delays, I might add) to go and partake in the experience of all things Chinese. After some alfresco chicken and noodles we followed the crowds around Soho, in search of the dragon who visits all the restaurants and eats the lettuce or vegetables left out for him. This is a form of good luck and fortune for the restaurants I am told.

So this year I made some chinese cookies, 4 different varieties; sesame seed, peanut butter, almond and fortune cookies. I have no idea which is my favourite - they are all just really yummy and moreish and really didn't last long at all!

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!