So sorry about the lack of posting this past week…right now I feel like I am writing to a long lost friend who I haven’t talked to in a while…but when holidays come, so do my orders and therefore my time for blogging is sadly cut short. The good news is that Blue Windows, one of the stores I got my cookies into, sold out of their first order of 2 dozen Easter sugar cookies in 1 1/2 days! I was so excited when I got the call and she wanted to order 6 dozen more!!! My hand wanted to kill me after the order, but I was just so happy that they sold well that I didn’t care at all. Well enough about cookies, this post is about cupcakes…chocolate peanut butter cupcakes to be exact. I brought these cupcakes along with a dozen Coconut Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting to one of my church’s outreaches this past Saturday. Baking for people is my passion and I find so much fulfillment in being able to put smiles on people’s faces and a good memory in their hearts and minds. To jazz these cupcakes up I used chocolate transfer sheet designs and cut mini Easter eggs out of them for the top of the cupcakes.

This chocolate cupcake recipe can be found at Chockylit’s Cupcake Bakeshop, which is probably one of my favorite blogs out there. She is absolutely blows me away with the great combinations she comes up with and all of the creativity that flows out of each posting. The particular recipe is one of the best chocolate cupcake recipes out there and I have used it countless times…once you try it you will be a convert too!

I decided to fill the cupcakes with leftover chocolate ganache I had from another day and think it worked out pretty well. Chocolate ganache is simply a combo of 50% heavy cream to 50% chocolate. You just heat your cream until is it about to boil and then pour it over your chopped chocolate (my favorite is bittersweet) and let it sit for a couple minutes before you whisk it till it’s thoroughly combined. You can also add a tablespoon of butter and corn syrup to the mixture when it’s still hot to give it a better flavor and more shine. If you are going to use it for a filling you need to let it cool completely until it is a thick spoonable consistency. Then just add your ganache to a pastry bag fitted with a medium size pastry tip and insert your tip into the cupcake and squeeze the filling out until you feel your cupcake expanding and the ganache comes up to the top.

I tried a new frosting this time…peanut butter frosting! This frosting from Ina Garten’s show, Barefoot Contessa, got rave reviews online at the Food Network, so I thought I would give it a try. I was definitely not disappointed! This is a delicious and extremely easy frosting to make and makes a wonderful pairing with chocolate cupcakes. I piped on the frosting using a pastry bag and a #8 tip.

I found these great new chocolate transfer sheet designs at Fancy Flours. To see how you make chocolate transfer sheet cut out’s check out my posting on Valentine’s Day Cupcakes. These kind of adornments are very impressive looking to people and yet pretty easy to make in my opinion, so I would highly recommend that you try it out!

Well, here are some more fun photos I took of the cupcakes and a photo of the Coconut Cream Cheese Cupcakes that I made for the event too! Thanks for looking!