a m y m c c r a c k e n

For Steve’s Dads birthday I decided to make a cake version of the cupcakes I made on Steve’s birthday.

I doubled my basic chocolate cake recipe:

chocolate cake

Ingredients

• 175g butter, softened
• 2 tsp vanilla essence
• 1 ¾ C sugar
• 3 eggs
• ½ C cocoa
• 2 C plain flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 C milk

Method

1. Preheat oven to 200°C. Line a muffin pan with paper cases.
2. Combine flour, cocoa powder, choc chips and caster sugar in a bowl. Make a well in the centre.
3. Add milk, butter, eggs and vanilla essence to flour mixture.
4. Using a large metal spoon, stir gently to combine.
5. Spoon mixture into prepared muffin pan.
6. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
7. Stand in pan for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool.

runny chocolate icing

• 1 T butter
• 2 T cocoa, sifted
• 1 C icing sugar, sifted
• Splash hot water

Mix the butter, cocoa and icing sugar together. Add hot water until you get a runny consistency

peanut butter icing

Ingredients

• ½ C peanut butter
• ½ C cream cheese
• 1 ½ icing sugar

Cream the peanut butter and icing sugar together then sift in icing sugar to get the consistency that you like.

assembly

• Cut the cake in half
• Cover both the base and top of the cake with a thin layer of runny chocolate icing
• Spread on half of the peanut butter icing on top over the base. I piped around the edge so that it had a nice finish.
• Place the top of the cake over the iced base
• Spread on the remaining icing on the top of the cake
• Place chocolate covered peanuts around the edge

For Steve’s birthday this year he let me go ahead with whatever flavour I wanted to go with. I decided to make banoffee cupcakes using my double choc cupcake recipe… he wasn’t too keen on banana so I decided on peanut butter instead mmmm…. peanut butter…

I hadn’t made a peanut butter icing before so I hit up my good friend google with ‘best peanut butter icing’ the results suggested to use cream cheese.

They were so delicious and tasted like mars bars!

double chocolate cupcakes

Ingredients

• 1 ½ C self-raising flour, sifted
• 3/4 C dark choc bits
• ½ C cocoa powder
• 3/4 C caster sugar
• 3/4 C milk
• 125g butter, melted, cooled
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1 tsp Vanilla Essence

Method

1. Preheat oven to 200°C. Grease a 12 x 1/3-cup capacity muffin pan. Alternatively, line holes with paper cases. Combine flour, cocoa powder, choc bits and caster sugar in a bowl. Make a well in the centre.
2. Add milk, butter, eggs and vanilla essence to flour mixture. Using a large metal spoon, stir gently to combine.
3. Spoon mixture into prepared muffin pan. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Stand in pan for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool.

icing

• 2 T cream cheese
• 2 T peanut butter
• 1 1/2 C icing sugar

Cream together the each cream cheese and peanut butter. Mix in as much icing sugar till you get the consistency you want.

decoration

Pipe icing onto the cupcakes. Decorate with a roasted peanut.