Chocolate Peanut Butter Surprise

This weekend happens to be my sister, Meghan's 27th birthday...(Yes it happens to be mine as well, more on that later!) Quite a while back she requested some chocolate peanut-butter cupcakes. So this week I went searching for a great recipe including those flavor combinations but one that also had a birthday feel to it. I ended up combing a few recipes (as I usually do) to come up with this. I call it Chocolate Peanut Butter Surprise!

As always I start simple with boxed cake-mix! You'll also need Reeses Cup miniatures...yum. I made a peanut butter frosting that is extremely yummy and also used a chocolate glaze! Here are all the ingredients:

Cake:

1 box chocolate cake mix

1 bag Reeses Cup miniatures (Warning: if you eat any you won't have enough!)

Icing: 

2 cups confectioners sugar

1 and 1/2 cups creamy peanut butter

10 tbs unsalted butter at room temperature

3/4 tsp vanilla

1/4 tsp salt

2/3 cup heavy whipping cream

Decor:

Sprinkles

Cherries 

Make your cake first according the the directions. Fill cupcake liners and place one Reeses Cup in each! (This is the surprise!)

Bake according to directions. In the meantime make your peanut butter frosting! First whisk the heavy cream until it peaks. This took patience. I kept thinking...surely that's good enough. I stuck it out until it looked almost  like cool whip though knowing it would affect the texture of my frosting! Then I thought, hmm, wonder why I didn't just use cool whip so I tasted it...yuck, its not the same. That was all free. So now back to your frosting! In a separate bowl mix your remaining ingredients on with a mixer on medium low speed. Once the ingredients are combined fold in your cream.

After your cupcakes bake and cool, top each one with a heap of frosting! It is important to mound it up just a bit like this: (It doesn't matter much how it looks since it will be covered with more chocolate...)

I suggest putting the cupcakes in some sort of pan as you decorate to catch any excess glaze and sprinkles. The glaze that I used is Duncan Hines amazing glazes. You warm it, drizzle, and it hardens within "minutes" (it took several...) I also considered using Magic Shell Chocolate - the ice cream topping! I think this would work as well!

After drizzling each cupcake with glaze, top with sprinkles and an additional Reeses Cup. Finally top each Reese Cups with a little more icing and place your cherry on the top for a beautiful finish!

Tomorrow I will travel to Seagrove, NC to spend all weekend with my sister and my mom, my mom's sisters and my cousins and these little babies will be making the trip. I have a feeling they won't be with us long...