My Little Cupcake: Peanut Butter & Jelly Cupcakes

Peanut..peanut butter...& jelly!

I don't know what the deal is lately but I have been craving peanut butter & jelly sandwiches..and no, I am not pregnant. :) It's not like this is a weird craving because every day I crave something new. It's just something that happens I guess.

Anywho - why not turn this craving into cupcake form? Sounds like an awesome idea to me!

I used the recipe over @ My Baking Addiction. (Thank you oh so much for sharing such a wonderful recipe). I added a few of my own twists though because I wanted these to be peanut buttery!

Here's the deal:

For the cupcakes~

2 1/4 cups cake flour

1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 1/4 cups buttermilk, room temperature
4 large egg whites, room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

A big ol' glob of creamy peanut butter

For the frosting~

3 sticks unsalted butter, softened
1 cup creamy peanut butter
2 tablespoons vanilla extract

A bit under a 2lb bag of confectioners' sugar (Recipe called for a whole bag but I didn't use it all.)

Milk (I used about 2-3 tablespoons, just to get my frosting creamy.

You will also need some jam/jelly for the filling. Choose any flavor that suits your fancy!

Directions:

For the cupcakes~

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

1. In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and salt.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the milk and egg whites.
3. Place the sugar and butter into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer and beat at medium speed for a full 3 minutes, until the butter and sugar are very light. Beat in the vanilla, then add one third of the flour mixture, still beating on medium speed. Beat in half of the buttermilk-egg mixture, then beat in half of the remaining dry ingredients until incorporated. Add the rest of the milk and eggs, beating until the batter is homogeneous, then add the last of the dry ingredients. Finally, add your scoop of peanut butter, as much as you like and let the mixer go a few rounds just to get it well incorporated. Using a large scoop (about 3 tablespoons), distribute the batter between 24 muffin wells, filling each well 2/3 full.
4. Bake for 18-22 minutes. Cool on wire rack.
5. Once cupcakes have cooled, hollow out a small circle in the center of each cupcake. Fill the center of each cupcake with your jam/jelly.

I used Creamy JIF for the peanut butter, and for my jam I wanted to use red raspberry because raspberry is my fav! The boyfriend and I had gone to UBake a week ago and he spotted this Red Raspberry Jalapeno Jam and he just had to have it. Welllll, he also requested that I use this jam in his cupcakes so I used this jam in half as well. I had to make sure I didn't mix them up because as I like to eat some weird food combinations, raspberries & jalapenos is not one of them!

Moving on to the frosting:

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment, cream butter and peanut butter on medium speed until fluffy.

That's a lot of butter! Start mixin'!

Holy Moly! Keep goin!

Thank goodness they have a machine for this!

2.Turn your mixer down to low speed and slowly add in the confectioner’s sugar, and continue mixing until well blended.
3. Add vanilla and 4 tablespoons of heavy cream. Blend on low speed until moistened. Add an additional 1 to 4 tablespoons of heavy cream until you reach the desired consistency. Beat at high speed until frosting is smooth and fluffy.

That looks like a job well done. :)

4. Pipe frosting onto cooled cupcakes and finish with a dollop of jelly or jam. Or heck..whatever you want!

Here's my babies right out of the oven smelling peanut buttery as ever!

I just loved these cute wrappers I picked up at Michaels!

I used a flower cutter to cut out from a piece of toast, then spread some of that peanut butter frosting on it! Lighting was very bad for these pictures so they are a little blahhh...but you see :)