One girl who bakes cupcakes

How can these not make you happy? They're little packages of perfection with velvety chocolate frosting covering the moist delicious cupcake beneath. What can I say? I love cupcakes! I remember the exact moment my cupcake addiction began. I was watching an episode of a short lived TV show called What about Brian with my mother and I saw that the main characters had decided to create a cupcake bakery. The cupcakes looked amazing. I'd never seen a cupcake before with such a wonderful cupcake to icing ratio, roughly 1:1. So late one night I decided to make myself a batch. They didn't look amazing but I discovered the deliciousness of butter cream frosting on cupcakes. From that moment on I was addicted to the awesomeness of cupcakes. I have to say that there's nothing better than seeing the pure glee on someone's face when they bite into a delicious cupcake. At first their face looks indifferent. Then their eyes open, their mouth widens and finally they let out an ecstatic 'Ohhhh my GOD.' Yeah, I like to call it a 'foodgasm'.

Plus I have to say that baking a batch of cupcakes has gotten me out of a lot of sticky situations. by that I mean they're the perfect way of saying to someone 'I'm incredibly sorry I was such an annoying jerk'. The jerkiness is immediately forgotten once they have a hunk of sugary goodness in their mouths.

The photo above is of my latest batch of wonderfully fatty cupcakes! Of course I like to experiment with my recipes so I invented the recipe below. It's for peanut butter cupcakes with real chocolate frosting aka pure heaven.

Peanut Butter Cupcakes makes 12

Cupcake
1 c caster sugar
2 eggs at room temperature
60 grams butter at room temperature
80 grams peanut butter at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
3/4 c self raising flour or 3/4c regular flour with 3/4 tsp baking powder
6/10 c regular flour
1/3 c milk

Butter Cream frosting
150g butter at room temperature
100g icing sugar
50g Dark Chocolate about 70% (I use Whittaker's Dark Ghana)

1. Preheat oven to 180 C on fan bake
2. Beat the butter and peanut butter together for 3 minutes until the butter is substantially lighter and the mixture looks fluffy.
3. Gradually add the caster sugar and make sure to mix it well.
4. Beat the eggs in one at a time beating well (a few mins) after each addition until the mixture lightens.
5. Add the vanilla to the milk.
6. Alternate adding the flour and the milk to the butter mixture. Add it in thirds and mix until just combined. Make sure that the flour is well combined before adding the milk otherwise your mixture will be lumpy.
7. Pour the mixture into cupcake cases in a cupcake tray. Fill each case to the 3/4 mark.
8. Cook for 20 minutes. This is reasonably variable though so keep an eye on the cupcakes. If a toothpick comes out of the cupcake clean then they're ready.
9. Leave until cool.

Frosting
1. Place the chocolate in a small cup in a saucepan of boiling water. Then put the pot on low heat and wait for the chocolate to melt. Once the chocolate has melted then remove the cup from the saucepan and leave it to rest on the bench until the chocolate is luke warm.
2. Meanwhile beat the butter until light and fluffy (about 2-3 mins).
3. Gradually add the sifted icing sugar to the butter and beat well.
4. Fold the chocolate into the butter mixture. The chocolate must be reasonably cool otherwise it will melt the butter.
5. Chuck the frosting on top of the cold cupcakes.

Plus I think I should warn that these cupcakes are so delicious you'll probably end up eating a lot of them. And a lot of the icing. And you may need to go to weight watchers after a few batches.

Song Addiction
Hey Na Na - Katie Herzig

Hosted by kiwi6.com file hosting. Download mp3 - Free File Hosting.