Chocolate, Peanut Butter and Caramel Cupcakes with a Shortbread Biscuit

Such a long title but these cupcakes are simple and uncomplicated!

Now, quite annoyingly I have now moved to London and have not brought this particular recipe with me ... big whoops!  So I will tell you how I made them, what components are involved and I'm sure you will be able to recreate them!

I made these cupcakes for my mums Birthday she's not a sweet tooth but she loves peanut butter and Reese's peanut butter cups so these were my invention for her!

So what is involved ... Chocolate and peanut butter cupcakes, ganache, caramel, peanut butter icing, shortbread biscuit and peanut butter cups!  It sounds like a lot and I guess it is but this cupcake is not hugely time consuming like it may sound and all these yummy individual elements come together to create the 'mother' (yes, yes, I did that) of all peanut butter cupcakes.

I made my own peanut butter cups but I also bought some of Reese's miniature's.  If you would like to make your own it's simple.  Melt chocolate, I used dark but you could use milk.  Then pour into cupcake liners of your desired size, (Small is best and silicon is handy for this too) line the edges with the chocolate and leave to set.  Once set spoon in peanut butter, I like crunchy in mine!  Then to finish off cover with more melted chocolate.

Simple these make great treat and if you use dark they are even healthier :)

Apologies for not posting a recipe but basically you want to bake a batch of chocolate cupcakes or chocolate muffins.   The recipe I used was more muffin like, I think this helped them to not be sickly, but a butter based cupcake would be nice and rich if you can take that.  Place a spoonful of peanut butter in the batter/mix and bake :) yum!!!

I was experimenting so made some with peanut butter some without.... The peanut butter definitely wins out, I mean look at it, it's beautiful.

Then you will need to assemble ...requiring, ganache, caramel, the peanut butter cups, peanut butter, butter icing and the optional shortbread, these are a nice addition but not essential, I just wanted to spell out mum.

Spoon on your ganache making a slight hollow in the centre for the caramel to sit.  Then pipe around the edge of your cake with some of the icing, essentially make a wall.  Then fill the space in the middle with caramel, then pipe the rest of the icing in your normal fashion.  Top with your peanut butter cups an the optional shortbread.  Caramelised peanuts would also be amazing on top of this cupcake!!!  Mmmmm Heaven!!!

Baby shower cupcakes

I recently made cupcakes for my friends baby shower. Having decided not to find out the baby's sex before birth she wanted both blue and pink for her cupcakes. 

I decided to ice some blue, some pink and some both.  If you would like recipes please don't hesitate to get in touch but for this post I will just be explaining how I did things. 

To create a two coloured piped icing you need to mix up both your icing colours. Then fill one side of the piping with one colour and then fill the remaining side with the other. Basically when you have done this you should be able to see when you hold your piping bag vertical half is blue and half is pink. Squeeze the icing until both colours come through at the same time. Then ice as normal. 

For decorations I made fondant icing letters and roses. For the letters I rolled out the icing and then used alphabet cutters to cut out icing letters speeding Baby Roberts. 

I had never made icing roses before. To be honest I rarely work with fondant but these were surprising easy to make and I think they turned out really well. 

I watched a really helpful tutorial on line. I suggest you watch it. http://youtu.be/1R8MsL-5oKA 

I would say you will need more petals than she uses. I basically made quite a few and just kept wrapping them around until I reached the size of rose I wanted. 

I didn't use a plastic wallet also I used a ziplock bag. 

Another technique I used was covering the cakes with fondant icing rather than a buttercream swirl. You can also find many tutorial for this online. 

Now this video is a little odd but bare with her she's actually rather good and I found it quite helpful. It's the same principle as I used. http://youtu.be/bxOuEzS6aFs

If you have any questions please comment or message me. I am happy to help or just hear from you!! 

The cakes went down a treat and I have already been asked to do more baby showers !!!