Taste & Create: Peanut Butter Cupcakes with Chocolate Peanut Fudge Frosting

Taste & Create is  blogging event I participate in on an (almost) monthly basis... my post a reliably a day or two late... which is a reflection on Life and its tendency to get in the way and my own, blogging laziness - the actual process of reading my partner's blog and planning what I'm going to make is a lot of fun! That's why I keep coming back... that, and I love getting the feedback from someone else trying out my recipes.

So, if you're reading this, and you're a blogger too - you should sign up! The people are really lovely and it's a lot of fun! Also - it forces a person to post at least once a month... encouragement some of us need more than others... *ahem*

This month I was paired with Carol of No Reason Needed... her blog is a combination of food, family and Life - it's a fun and interesting read!

I had planned to make her Chicken Tetrazzini with Crescent Rolls, but I was called into work that day and my mummy made the Tetrazzini sans crescent rolls for me... but I couldn't submit something I didn't make! That would be cheating!

...So I kept on reading... and eventually stumbled across Peanut Butter Cupcakes SOLD!!!

OM NOM NOM!!!

Now, I didn't have any chocolate to melt to make the ganache suggested by Carol's daughter Dakota, so I decided to create my own peanut butter fudge frosting... and wow. Just. Wow. I'll share the recipe for that with you guys too!

Back to the original recipe - I did my best to follow instructions! I did, however make only a third of the recipe which is four cupcakes! The perfect number for two people!

In my thirding - I misread the quantity of baking soda called for and accidentally put in the full amount... I've corrected this for my version down below though... and that is the only factor that spoils these rather delicious cupcakes! I'll be making them again for sure, and I think you should too!

Amazing Not-Too-Sweet Cream Cheese Icing

Computer Board Brownie Birthday Cake...

...Carrot Cake Cupcake...

...Red Velvet Cupcakes... 

...a little Red Velvet Birthday Cake...

...Big Red Velvet Birthday Cake...

...and a slice of that big ol' Red Velvet Birthday Cake...

What do all these cakes have in common? (Aside from the fact most of them are Red Velvet...)

You know it! Cream Cheese Icing... which is, basically, the bestest, most yummiest kind of frosting in the world... along with all the other kinds of frosting, off course!

Now, the problem a lot of people have with frosting is that it is really, really sweet... a direct result of all the icing sugar needed to make it stiff and fluffy... and not just butter or cream cheese with a bit of vanilla stirred in.

You'll often see question in the comments section "But *insert type of frosting here* is really sweet and it hurts my teeth... is there any way to make it less sweet?" and the answer is often "No - it's sweet because of the icing/confectioner's/powdered sugar... and you need all that sugar to get the right texture for the frosting"...

But... there is something else in your pantry with a very similar texture to icing sugar... and it isn't sweet... what I'm thinking of is... CORNFLOUR!!! (also know as cornstarch, I believe?)

Now, I'm not saying I'm the first to come up with this theory... but as far as I came up with it all by myself. :) And it really works for me! I just take out one 1/4 of the icing sugar the frosting recipe calls for and sub in that same quantity of cornflour... et voila! Frosting with the same texture you need but not as sweet as you dread...

I wouldn't sub any more than a quarter of the sugar for flour because then you start to taste it a little bit, which is kinda average. But a 1/4 or less and you have the same taste, only less sweet. Excellent!

Read on for my converted recipe for cream cheese icing...

EDIT: I have successful used this method for buttercream frosting too!

Carrot Cupcakes (with Cream Cheese Icing)

This recipe hasn't remodeled for cup-caking purposes - so, if you wanted to make a  full sized cake, or muffins? all you need to do is a adjust the cooking times and you're good to go!

The recipe is adapted from the one Moll Katzen features in her Moosewood Cookbook I've played around with the quantity of sweetener, the kinds of spices and halved the recipe overall. Finally I topped these little babies off with my delicious cream cheese icing (which I'll feature in another post...) and little icing carrots (I'd meant to use the walnuts I'd omitted from the batter - but I got carried away!)

Aren't they the cutest?!

I took them with me on a picnic where they were very well received. Flavoursome, moist and not too sweet (a trick of that mysterious icing) because they contain both wholemeal flour AND carrots they've got to be good for you, right?

A delicious cross section...

If you've got the stuff with which you can bake in your flat anyway - there's nothing particularly prohibitive about this recipe... if you're not living in a baking friendly flat - try these when you get home!

If you have to give the cream cheese icing a miss (not always a flat friendly ingredient)  they're almost as good on their own - or a simple drizzle of lemon juice and icing sugar would be a suitable substitute.

Cottage Cheese Cupcakes

Oh, you poor, little, neglected blog... I've been... Well. To be perfectly honest, I've been procrastinating. I've been procrastinating life!

The kind of procrastination where even room tidying and blog writing isn't sufficient. The kind of procrastination where you huddle in a small ball on your bed crying and rocking and hoping, hoping that if you rock hard enough the rest of the world will just... Go. Away.

It's nearly the end of my University Term - can you tell?

I've not been taking many photo's lately - not because I haven't been cooking. I have. It's just me and the Gorgeous Boy now. But I've been making the kind of food most suitable for a blog called "study food" - the kind where you look in the fridge and think "Wow. That's one HUGE cabbage. Why did I buy that again?! (Oh yeah, it was reeeal cheap...) What on Earth am I going to do with it now?!" and so you dig out your Digby Law vegetable cook book and cook up Norweigan Cabbage until all that cabbage is gone. And you never want to see another cabbage again. Real food. Student food. Food that just does NOT photograph well.

You see, when you start writing a blog you think to yourself that you're totally gonna blog daily about all your cooking experiences both the good, and the bad... But it doesn't really work out that way. First off, because usually your (my) failures are so depressing that that last thing you (I) want to do with them is photograph them. And secondly, because whether you mean to or not, you become a food snob, and you don't want to put just anything on your blog - you wanna put nice things out there - people might read it!

That said, I have quite a few old photo's just chillin' here on my harddrive waiting for me to upload 'em and 'em with y'all! And I made a Beef Wellington in the break, and I just made the most divine Malteser Slice which will most definately be photographed and posted! (Provided, you know, I don't eat it all first... and I wonder why my weight's not going anywhere?!)

But to start off with, a real, valid student favourite - one that's already featured on this very blog. Cottage Cheese Loaf. But this is Cottage Cheese Loaf as it's never been before...

I present to you, drumroll please...



Dun, dun, duuun...

 The COTTAGE CHEESE CUPCAKE!!! withreducedtomatofrostingandtoastedcuminseedsprinklesforalimitedtimeonly...

These. Are. Awesome! Hello?! Cupcakes!

Read on for the recipe...

Cupcake EsCUPades

So, no recipes today... But an example of experimentation... As we all know, cup cakes are awesome! (Except when enterprising persons unknow turn them into Cup Cake Cakes) Recently I've been trying to create new and exciting Cup Cake flavours...



Left: Afghan Cup Cakes, Top Right: ChocoCaramel, Bottom Right: Lemon, Honey, Nutmeg.

I have yet to create a perfect result, which is why I'm not posting a recipe today, but I think it's important to document the process!

The cake part of both the ChocoCaramel and L, H, N cupcakes turned out well. As always, I've dramatically decreased the sugar (not that you'd notice...) and slightly decreased the butter. However, with cupcakes, when you decrease the butter you've gotta increase the milk by a tablespoon or two so as not to let the mixture get too dry. The icing on both these cup cakes, though was a FAIL. Well, not so much in the case of the ChocoCaramels - it tasted good and looks Okaaay... But I personally perfer my cupcakes with buttercream, and because this icing is prepared hot that fluffy texture just isn't possible. Also, those puppies were sweet! The L, H, N cupcakes, on the other hand, tasted Okay, but looked DISGUSTING - in an effort to get an extreme lemon hit in I overdid the juice and the icing separated! Not too sweet was a plus though!

The most recent, Afghan cupcakes, were me trying to improve on the famous cookies (heresay, I know...). However, as I feared the cornflakes, without the dryness of cookie batter went a little soggy. I think that the answer to this one would be to put the walnuts IN the cupcake and the cornflakes ON the cup cakes to retain that all-important CRUNCH, as you can see from the photo (and I'm rather proud of that one...) we didn't have any walnuts, so I'm already testing out the cornflake on top theory!

And that's it for today, my lovelies... Has anyone else experimented with cupcake and wanting to share? You should invite yourself over and we can have a cupcake party!

:)