Procrastination Recipe: Peanut Butter Buttercream Frosting

The computer is still in the shop though the IT guy told my mother on Friday that he's been able to recover some pictures, so I guess there is some hope to hold onto on that front. Fingers, legs and eyes crossed!

Saturday morning was Molly's sister's engagement party. There was cake planned but as there were also two birthdays to celebrate so she asked if I'd be willing to make some cupcakes for the occasion. That's like asking a dog to go play with its favorite toy. Of course I will bake cupcakes for you!

Originally I had wanted to make a fall-festive cupcake. Maybe an apple cupcake with cream cheese frosting and a caramel drizzle. I also thought maybe just going with red velvet would be a good idea because who doesn't love red velvet? But when I asked Molly what her sister would like she suggested something with chocolate and peanut butter. So that's what I ultimately went with.

Easy choice on the chocolate front - I went with Devil's food. To make things easier with my time crunch I went with a box cake mix but I absolutely recommend trying cupcakes/cake from scratch. It's not difficult (unless you have no flour left in your cabinets, like me) and tastes great. After baking let cupcakes cool completely. I am an impatient person and have made the mistake many times of frosting before the item has cooled and trust me, it's a mess you don't want to deal with.

Frosting Ingredients:

Two sticks unsalted butter (softened)
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup peanut butter
1 32oz. bag confectioners sugar
1/4 cup milk

My recommendation is to make this right before you intend to frost the cupcakes. I made it the night before and then had to deal with softening it back up so I could pipe it. I also made the mistake of overstuffing the plastic ziplock to pipe the frosting with and it began breaking through the bag (it was a mess). However, they came out pretty good. One person at the party was even trying to convince me to go into business selling cupcakes to people for parties. It's a fun idea, we'll see what happens. As an added touch I stuck dark chocolate (let's be honest, it's the better chocolate) mini pb cups on top.