National Cupcake week!

I have been meaning to post this earlier today but I got distracted with yoga and then watching the Great British Bake Off. I was so pleased that they let everyone through to next week!! But I felt so sorry for John:0(

My first cupcake recipe for the National Cupcake week is a flavour which I have been wanting to make for ages but I have been worried that the hype might not be live up to it...... The flavours are Chocolate and Peanutbutter!! Two of my favourites so they better not let me down!

I wanted a chocolate cupcake which was dark and moist, I looked through my books but couldn't find anything exciting. I checked one of the websites I go to for recipes and came across a lovely recipe from Joy of Baking.
This recipe yields 16 cupcakes but I filled 12 cupcake cases and didn't have much left.

Preheat the oven to 190c

Ingredients
50g cocoa powder
240ml freshly boiled water

175g all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
113g butter (rum temperature)
200g golden caster sugar (or normal white caster sugar
2 large eggs
2 tsp of vanilla extract

Line your cupcake tin with cases.
Boil 240ml of water and mix with the cocoa powder, set aside to cool.

Mix the flour, baking powder and salt together, set aside for later.
Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, mix in the eggs until well mixed. Add the vanilla extract and then mix in the flour until just incorporated. Pour in the chocolate mix until smooth. Be sure to beat the chocolate mix before pouring in as a lot of it might sit on the bottom.
Bake for 16-20 minutes, I check with a tootpick after 20 minutes and it came out clean.

The mixture was really liquidy so I had to pour it in rather than "ice cream scopping it".

Uhm, yeah so I DID have one before I managed to take a picture:0) Yum!

I used a different peanut butter frosting because I was looking for something which used whipped cream or cream cheese. I felt that an icing with just butter, peanut butter and icing sugar would be too heavy. I found this delicious recipe from Bakers Royale.

Ingredients
110g icing sugar
177g of peanut butter
70g butter (room temperature)
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
78ml double cream (I used 100ml)

Whip the double cream in a separate bowl and set aside.
Mix the rest of the ingredients with the paddle attachment and beat on a medium speed until incorporated.
Fold the peanut butter mix into the whipped cream until well combined.

I used the bag of mini Reese's I bought the other week to top the cupcakes off! 

 

Try stopping yourself from eating these mini Reese's......

This baby is mine!

This flavour combination is pretty darn good and I have to give some away in order to prevent myself from eating them all! I just regret one thing.....and that is not bringing myself to make them sooner!

Ciao!x