What can I say? Life has well and truly gotten on top of me. It’s been several weeks since my last update, but that does not mean I haven’t been baking. I’ve just not had the time to spend to sit down and put everything together. My time has been otherwise engaged with a young lady, and I couldn’t be happier to have her taking up my time. She gets first dibs on trying everything that I bake these days though, and everything is coming up with the Kirsty seal of approval.
But enough of that, time to move on to the reason you people are here <s>my beard</s> food! First up of a run of updates will be Nutella stuffed chocolate cupcakes with Peanut Butter Cream Cheese frosting. These were a bit of an experiment to see if I could combine a couple of recipes that I’ve used in the past. They ended up being a gooey mess. One is most certainly enough but I wouldn’t let that put you off. The cupcake recipe is one I’ve used before and is here. They make very moist cupcakes which make the gooey center fairly stodgy. I’d save these for a dessert.
The key with the frosting would be to get a more expensive peanut butter, this means it’ll be less oily and will make a much better frosting. Alas, I hadn’t thought this through so ended up with a shiny and hard to use (if still tasty) frosting.
- For the cupcakes:
- 130g all-purpose flour
- 200g granulated sugar
- 65g cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 120 ml milk
- 60 ml vegetable oil
- 1 egg
- ½ teaspoon vanilla
- 120 boiling water
- For the filling:
- 170g Cream Cheese
- 170g Nutella
- For the frosting:
- 200g Cream Cheese
- 120g Peanut Butter (better quality the better)
- 700g Icing Sugar
- 2 Tbsp Milk or Cream
- Preheat the oven to 150°C and line your cake tray with cases.
- Mix together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. Whisk until it’s well mixed.
- Combine the Nutella and Cream Cheese separately.
- Add the “wet” ingredients, apart from the boiling water, and mix on a medium speed until well combined.
- Reduce the speed and very carefully add the boiling water. Slowly up the speed until it’s on high and allow to mix for around 1 minute. This will get a good amount of air into the mix.
- Distribute the batter evenly into the cases. Fill to around ¾ of the case. Depending on the size of the case you’ll get between 12 and 18 cakes, but always fill to about ¾. Drop a dollop of the nutella mix into the middle of each one.
- Bake for 12-25 minutes. The cakes will be done when a tooth pick inserted into the center comes out clean.
- Remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly in the tray before transferring to a rack.
- While they are cooling, prepare the frosting.
- Beat the cream cheese until soft. Mix in the Peanut butter. Beat until well combined.
- Mix in the Icing sugar and finally the milk or cream. Beat until it makes a stiff frosting.
- Pipe onto the cakes.
I want them -gimme hands-
xx | Izzy