Peanut Butter Mini Cupcakes

LAUREN:

Yes, the day has come where we have finally made chocolate cupcakes.
Not.
I thought these cupcakes would be so chocolatey. Note: The picture is misleading. Mostly because the cups are dark brown. This makes my mind think: CHOCOLATE. LETS MAKE THEM. But note, they are not. They are just peanut butter. Sorry about that tangent and my upsett-ed-ness. As you can probably tell from reading that, today was probably the most emotional day for everyone. It started off with Zoe doing something in the recipe that Kelsey thought was wrong, so he started fake yelling at her until I told them that these cupcakes had to taste like love and if they weren't okay with it they could leave. It was funnier if you were there. But after that went down, we were pretty much okay. It was probably the most interesting cupcake baking time we have had yet.

Note: The picture above was taken in response to me yelling "SHOW ME THE LOVE YOU NEED TO HAVE FOR THESE CUPCAKES" to them. They did pretty well.

The cake part was pretty easy to make. A lot of peanut butter and not very much sugar. I think we kind of unanimously decided that these cupcakes would taste better if there was more sugar in the cake part, it was kind of bland-ish compared to our frosting we made. Also it turned out very crumbly--I would've liked it if it was a little more cupcake-ish. Anywayssss.

The picture to the right is the result of me asking Kelsey to fill the teaspoon with salt. As you can see, I will NEVER ask him to do that again for me.
When making these cupcakes, also you should make sure that you separate them into the tins sparingly. They are called mini cupcakes, which for this recipe meant you still used the standard cupcake cups and baking pans, but you filled a lot less of the cup. If you use all the batter, each cup should only be about half full. We didn't know this so we ended up running out and then having to alter a bunch by taking some out and putting it in other ones.

Now I will go into another aspect of these cupcakes: the frosting. The recipe calls for 1/3c crunchy peanut butter and 1/3c hazelnut spread. Kelsey says hazelnut smells like dog pee, so he wouldn't let us use it. (yes I know, that doesn't even make sense.) So we didn't want to just use crunchy peanut butter because that wouldn't be sweet enough. First we added some brown sugar to taste. Then we thought we could chop up chocolate chips and throw those in too. At this point, it tasted pretty good. If you want to make our frosting, just add in the brown sugar and chocolate chips slowly and add more according to the taste you prefer. When chopping the chocolate chips, you should chop them pretty fine so part of it is pretty powdery. After tasting the frosting on the cupcakes, I think here is where we went wrong. We set the bowl of the frosting on the oven, which was a little heated on top from the cupcakes baking on the inside. This made the frosting melt, mostly the chocolate in it. I think it would have tasted better if it hadn't melted at all. But overall, it was pretty good for a recipe we made up in the moment.

Then this happened. This is me, eating away my sorrow at something that I found out, haha. I won't go into details but.. if you were there, you know what happened. And that is all that has to be said.

I love these pictures, Kelsey did such a great job! To quote him, "I did it because it looks like they're pine cones!" Wisdom indeed. So weird, but so cute. Also right after this he dropped the pine needles on these cupcakes so.. win lose.
I would have to agree with Zoe and say that these were good, not great. Definitely nothing compared to the ones we have made in the past. Granted, they probably would have tasted way better with the hazelnut spread frosting, but the consistency of the cupcakes was just weird. Maybe we cooked them too long, I don't know. I probably would nay recommend these, but only because we have made such better ones, like the White Chocolate cupcakes and the Half Moon cupcakes. Hopefully the next batch will be better!!

ZOE:
Peanut Butter = so good. These cupcakes were kind of crumbly which was not so nice, but they tasted pretty good. We invented our own frosting out of peanut butter, brown sugar, and chopped chocolate chips. It was very tasty, but very crunchy and tended to fall of the cupcakes. And I agree with Lauren that we shouldn't have left the frosting on the stove, it would have been way better if the chocolate hadn't melted into it so much. IN CONCLUSION: good, not great. Most of all, fun to make! Quote of the day: "THESE CUPCAKES HAVE TO TASTE LIKE LOVE, SO YOU CAN SHAPE UP OR SHIP OUT!!!!"--Lauren

KELSEY:

So now that I have finished editing Lauren's post and everything is spelled correctly I can address the cupcakes. THEY SUCKED. Period. the best part was throwing them away a week after we made them because no one ate them. They were dry and good with milk. and looked like pine cones yes. But I had no funmaking them or eating them. I do nay recommend.