Thursday, July 14, 2011

Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Buttercream Icing

Hi everyone!!
Wow, I can't believe that it's been a month since my last post!  Summer has been busy so far and has been flying by.  My little boy is 8 months old already, which just seems completely unreal.  I keep thinking I must have counted wrong and he's only 6 months old.  He's at such a fun age - he really responds to you with giggles and smiles and is developing quite a little personality.  He really likes structure and is very schedule orientated, and as long as he gets his naps on time, he is one happy monkey. He's very social - loves going to everyone and loves loves loves looking at pictures of babies.  He really enjoys reading books and flipping pages.  When he's playing on the floor, more often than not he'll crawl to either his bookshelf or his stack of books underneath his little old fashioned desk and try and figure out how to get the books open.  He also likes to do things FAST.  He likes it when I run while holding him, when daddy throws him up in the air, and being twirled around in a circle.  The faster, the better.  He's not a snuggler - he often wants to be held, but at an arms length away while he's exploring everything else.


Anyways, speaking of time flying by, my husband turned the big 3-0 last week!  I threw him a little surprise birthday party with just a few of his closest friends and family and made chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter icing.  Okay, I'm not going to lie- the cupcakes were Duncan Hines or Betty Crocker, who's to say really.. but they came from a box.  The icing though! Aye there's the rub... it took a while to find the perfect recipe but I found one.  I decided to go with a Wilton recipe, since the comments were all really good and that's who I learned my cake decorating skills from.  



You can find the recipe for Peanut Butter ButterCream Icing here.  The only change I made was I added an extra half cup peanut butter for a total of one cup!   Oh, but I did at a lot more milk to thin it down.  I just added until it was the consistency I wanted, which was probably about 10-12 Tbsps. I used my 1M Tip (large star tip) and piped the icing all around the edges and then up into the middle like an ice cream cone.  This cupcake in the picture is actually a couple days later and it had been laying on its side- so the icing is a bit smushed in places but you get the idea!