Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes

How fitting that for my first blog post, I decide to blog about something that I only took one picture of - with my cell phone as I was stopped at a red light. Oh well. I've got to take the plunge into the land of bloggers sometime so it might as well be now!

This morning I decided I needed to make something to take to my husband and all his work buddies. It needed to be quick, easy, and absolutely delicious. So... Cupcakes it is!

Since I needed to have these done and delivered before naptime, I decided to go the easy route and use a cake mix. Yeah... who am I kidding? It's a rare occasion when I DON'T use a cake mix! I used the Duncan Hines Devil's food cake and I highly recommend it over other brands. My cupcakes were very moist and delicious. (No, I'm not getting paid to advertise, it's just the truth!)

I decided to try out the peanut butter frosting from my favorite food blog How Sweet It Is, but as I was searching for some creamy peanut butter, I found an empty jar left in the cupboard from when I made monster cookies. I wasn't willing to give up though and decided to use chunky peanut butter instead. I really liked how it turned out and thought it somehow made the cupcakes seem even fancier.  So, I've adapted the recipe to the following:

Peanut Butter Buttercream:

1/2 cup butter, softened
2/3 cup chunky peanut butter
3 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2-3 tablespoons of milk

Cream butter and peanut butter together in the bowl of an electric mixer. Add powdered sugar with mixer on low speed and gradually add milk and vanilla extract. Mix until frosting is smooth. If too thick, add more milk; if too thin, add more sugar.


Now for anyone who wants to make a really easy and delicious dessert, I'm telling you. Make these cupcakes! They look fancy, but they were ridiculously easy. Here is what I did:


1. Bake some delicious devil's food cupcakes from a box mix following the directions exactly. Make sure you let them cool completely on a cooling rack before frosting them.

2. Mix up a batch of peanut butter buttercream. Put the frosting in a decorating bag or ziplock bag with the corner cut off and squeeze a blob of frosting on top of the cupcake.

3. Pull out some hot fudge ice cream topping from the fridge and heat it up in a ziplock bag (cut off the corner after heating). Then drizzle it out while crazily moving the bag over the cupcakes - resulting in a very messy kitchen counter and beautiful cupcakes!

4.Make sure to taste test at least one... or four or five cupcakes to make sure they turned out!