Peanut Butter Chocolate Awesome

Once during my senior year in high school, a teacher made a comment about how chocolate was better than sex. She stated that "chocolate is better than sex because you know chocolate never disappoints." Besides this being completely inappropriate it has fueled my desire to make a better than sex cupcake. And I think I've finally nailed it (pun intended). 

I used my favorite chocolate cake recipe, the Guinness cake from a previous blog. I found the peanut butter frosting recipe online after a bit of digging. You can see the original recipe on Beyond Frosting's Wordpress.

Chocolate Cupcake:

1 C buttermilk 
1 C butter (room temp)
3/4 C coco powder
2 C flour (all-purpose)
2 C granulated sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
2 eggs
2/3 C sour cream

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and line out 24 cupcake tins with liners. Combine buttermilk and butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in coco powder until mixture is smooth. Set the saucepan aside.

In another bowl mix flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt in a bowl and set it to the side. In a large bowl beat eggs and sour cream till combine. Add the chocolate butter mixture, then slowly add the dry ingredients and mix till incorporated. 

Fill the cupcake liners two-thirds full with the batter. Pop them into the oven for about 15-17 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Set the cakes to the side and allow them to cool. 

Peanut Butter Frosting:

1 1/2 C unsalted butter (room temperature)

1 C peanut butter 

3 C powdered sugar

1 Tbsp heavy whipping cream

First, whip the crap out of the peanut butter. I kept adding peanut butter to the bowl so it was roughly 1 1/2 cups. Beat the peanut butter until it is fluffy. There will be a color change and the texture will look like whipped butter. Slowly add the butter to the mixture and continue to beat on high. You really want to fill the frosting with air. Once everything looks nice and light, lower the speed of the mixer and begin to add the powdered sugar. Finally, after the sugar is well incorporated add the heavy whipping cream and continue to beat the frosting until you reach a desired consistency. 

 Give them nice full tops so that when you add the chocolate cap it will have a nice billowed look. 

Once frosted, put the cupcakes into the fridge. The frosting is going to need to be chilled in order to hold up to the caps. 

Chocolate Cap:

2 C chopped semisweet chocolate

3 Tbls vegetable oil

Prepare a double boiler. In the top bowl add the chocolate and oil. When the chocolate begins to melt whisk the mixture until the chocolate is smooth and completely combine. Transfer the chocolate into a cup deep enough for dipping the cupcakes in to cap the chocolate. Remove the frosted cakes from the fridge and begin dipping.  

    

Then, muster up all the patience you can and wait for the caps to harden.

Mounds of Vegan Joy

On my way out to Denver I decided I wanted to make an Almond Joy inspired cupcake. The first attempt was such an awful fail that I stepped away from baking for a few days. It was awful. So once I got the confidence to try again, I decided to do a vegan twist. I disliked the heaviness of the first vegan cake I made so I searched out a fluffy vegan recipe for coconut cake. I tried a cake from Chloe Coscarelli  and was not disappointed. Her original recipe can be found by following the link, below is what I used. The changes are noted by an asterisk.

Coconut Cake:

1 3/4 C all-purpose flour

1 C sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 C coconut almond milk*

1/2 C canola oil

1 Tbls vanilla extract*

1 Tbls coconut extract*

1 Tbls white or apple cider vinegar 

1 C shredded coconut*

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line out the cupcake pan. 

In a large bowl combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In another bowl, whisk the coconut milk, oil, extracts, and vinegar. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and whisk until combine. Don't over mix, it will lead to flat lifeless cakes. 

Fill the cupcake liners two-thirds fill and bake for about 15 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let the cakes cool and start to work on the frosting. 

Chocolate Almond Frosting:

6 Tbsp soy margarine

3/4 C cocoa powder

2 2/3 C organic powdered sugar

1/3 C chocolate almond milk

1 tsp almond extract

Combine cocoa powder and powdered sugar in a bowl. In a separate bowl cream the margarine. Add the dry ingredients and almond milk, alternating between the two. If you want a fudgier consistency, add more milk. Beat in the almond extract. 

Now, get to frosting. 

Baked?

This is not a post about a baked good. I wanted to let the world know that I haven't abandoned blogging or baking, I just needed to get some other things taken care of before diving back into a cupcake excursion. Financial priorities or something like that. Anyways, I've been stalling on painting my room for some time now. I was on a search for an overhead projector because the image I wanted to put on my wall is too intricate for me to free hand. Luckily, I found one this week and decided to stall no more. 

This is the original photo

This is my naked wall

This is the end of day one. 

 I am stoked to see how this turns out. 

Also, here is a picture of a chocolate filled croissant from dinner the other night. Boom, baked goods :)