I heart peanut butter

Today the first meeting of Cupcake Club is taking place in London and alas I can't be there. Cupcake Club is the brain child of Kelly from An American Cupcake in London, to keep bakers busy while Iron Cupcake takes a (we hope temporary) break.

I had planned to go tonight and already practiced my cupcakes which were delicious, and my toppers, which although tasted fabulous, looked like something I'd picked off the floor.

I stuck with the nuts theme from the now cancelled Iron Cupcake and went with peanut butter and chocolate - the reasons being;

1. I love the combination
2. I'd never made peanut butter cupcakes before (too tempting to scoff them all) and
3. Cupcake club was taking place the day after July 5th and my favourite American candy is Reese's Peanut butter cups

I used the recipe for Peanut Butter cupcakes with chocolate frosting from my Primrose Bakery cookbook, changing it only slightly. I used crunchy peanut butter rather than smooth, and for the chocolate frosting used the 85% Green and Blacks chocolate as in my opinion it makes the best chocolate frosting ever. I also used slightly less salt than required as I find peanut butter a bit salty already. The cakes took a little less time than stated in the recipe and were just beginning to over-brown in the oven but luckily I caught them in time, and lashings of chocolate frosting covered up any darker bits. The cupcake was really moist and flavoursome - and lasted for days (I made them last Sunday and Manny was still scoffing them Tuesday night). The frosting remains my favourite ever chocolate frosting - we had to put these in the fridge as it was so hot last weekend and it still tasted great.

My toppers were going to be homemade peanut butter cups. I'd originally planned to just make cake pop type balls on a stick, but then while buying more lollipop sticks on ebay I chanced upon this beautiful candy mould and couldn't resist. Co-incidentally we bought a cupcake shaped chocolate lollypop at William Curley last week after visiting the Elephant Parade and they totally use this mould!

I didn't get a chance to test the moulds until Saturday, when my kitchen thermometer read in the high 30's. This was an omen of the disaster that followed. I melted the chocolate (used Green and Blacks cooking milk chocolate first, then their cooking dark chocolate for the second attempt) and while it set I mixed my peanut butter filling (smooth peanut butter, bit of icing sugar and a touch of vanilla paste = yum). I then plopped in the peanut butter mixture, shoved in a lolly stick and covered the mixture with the remaining melted chocolate. Then my error, I put it in the fridge as I thought this'd help. I know chocolate and fridges don't go but there was no way in hell it'd set in my kitchen. From looking online and checking forums etc I should've bunged it in the freezer..grr. I'll know next time. They tasted really nice, if only they'd not "bloomed" - maybe next time I should temper the chocolate? Any candy making tips gratefully received.

Anyways I thought my cupcakes looked quite cute - even without the toppers

And here are the failed toppers

Finally if you're a peanut butter fan like me, pop on over to Peanut Butter and Co's website and drool. Their sandwich range has given me some fabulous ideas for cupcake flavours and I desperately want some Easy Squeezy Peanut Butter squeeze packs! If you're in the UK, Waitrose and Whole Foods stock some of the range, including The Heat is On and White Chocolate Wonderful, which I think would make a lovely cupcake. I must check if they do the peanut butter cupcake mix next time I'm there.

Nuts about Iron Cupcake

So you may have read that Iron Cupcake has been cancelled next month. I and many other Iron Cupcake fans are hoping its just a holiday until Samantha, aka the Caked Crusader wants to come back as even after only baking twice for the event it has left a little cupcake shaped hole in my month.

As soon as I saw that the theme for July was "nuts and seeds" I got my thinking cap on. I first thought of something more classy like a rosewater and pistachio cupcake, similar to the beautiful one on the cover of Vegan Cupcakes Take over the World, however I couldn't ignore my one love in the nut world - peanut butter. I LOVE it. Adore it. Can't think of life without it. So before the winners were even announced I'd asked Ann Arbor Dennis (who was with me at the comp) to bring me some bags of Reese's peanut butter cups back from his trip home later this month as I was 99% sure I was going to use them in some way for my July entry.

Thanks to The Bleeding Heart Bakery for use of their Elvis photo

My thought was something along the lines of the Elvis cupcake from my newly acquired, and awesome, book Who you callin' cupcake by the owners of The Bleeding Heart Bakery in Chicago, Michelle and Vinny Garcia. The Elvis cupcake is a peanut butter, banana and bacon cupcake - except I was planning just to do a banana and peanut butter cupcake as I've had a bacon cupcake and quite frankly never need to try another. My plan was to top them with Reeses peanut butter cups, then I saw this

Thanks to Confessions of a Cookbook Queen for use of their photo and for such cuteness!

on the Confessions of a Cookbook Queen blog and I had a bit of an oh.my.god moment. A peanut butter cup covered in frosting to make a little mini cupcake - perfect as toppers for a peanut butter cupcake!

My other cupcake idea was something a bit adventurous for me, due to the sugarpaste topper. Something I've never done before. However I thought I'd share it with you incase you are and you fancy giving this cute topper a go!

First up was my other idea for a cupcake. I thought of candy/sweets I like with nuts in and the two contenders were Starbar (one of my favourite chocolate bars ) and Turtles

which I tried when in New York - yummy caramel chocolaty pecan goodness. I have several recipes for Turtle cupcakes in my cookbooks (including one yet again in Who you callin' cupcake), but if you fancy giving it a go and haven't got a recipe you could try this one from Bakers Royale - doesn't it look fabulous!

Thanks to Bakers Royale for the use of their photo - Chocolate Turtle Cupcake

My plan was to attempt to to top the turtle cupcakes with turtle toppers using the tutorial from Cake Journal - although I'm not sure they'd look quite as cute as these!

Thanks to Cake Journal for use of the Turtle photo

Alas now that the competition has been cancelled I wont be making either of these for the other Iron Cupcakers but I think I'm going to give the non-bacon version of the Elvis cupcakes a go, with the Reese's peanut butter toppers just to see if they taste as good as I imagine they will do!

I do hope Iron Cupcake is back soon as I have so many ideas and I love baking - it would be a shame not to be able to bake for others and also a shame if we lost such a fun competition from the London cupcake scene!