Peanut Butter Cookie Cupcakes

Yes, Peanut Butter Cookies in the form of cupcakes. Sweet, peanut-buttery tasting with a lovely creamy frosting.

The white marks are from icing sugar left over from the fork used to make the cross-hatch design (intended to make them look for cookie-ish).

The basic recipe is from Martha Stewart's Cupcake book but I recommend a couple of slight changes.



Firstly, I just don't like using butter in cupcakes, I much prefer Canola oil. This makes for a much moister cake. Secondly, this also allows for a change in the method, the "dump" method.. much easier and quicker. Dump was the general method used here, but with some adjustments given the addition of actual peanut butter into the cake batter.

Instead of putting all the ingredients into the bowl of the KA (KitchenAid Stand Mixer), add the dry ones first, then add the eggs and oil, then the sour cream and peanut butter.

Here's the link to Martha's recipe. One more change I would make is to increase the leaveners to 1 full teaspoon baking powder and 1 half teaspoon baking soda. These are fairly dense cupcakes and I felt they needed more lift. Also, substitute 3/4 cup of Canola for the 3/4 cup of butter.

Martha suggests baking for 13 mins -  based on very small cakes, I needed to increase that time to 18-19 mins, still for very small cupcakes.

The frosting is really nice, very creamy, very peanut buttery. These actually taste better slightly cold from the fridge.

Makes 24 not 30, best served with a big glass of milk.

Here's is Martha's pic... hmmm, so much better looking, but I think that's got a lot to do with the camera, lighting, photography skill (of Martha's minions).....etc.