Chocolate & Peanut Butter. Can there be anything better?

So good, and incredibly rich! I combined ideas from a few different recipes that I found to make these. I used a basic chocolate cupcake recipe that I have in one of my cookbooks, chopped up baker peanut butter cups and mixed them into the batter, made a cream cheese peanut butter frosting, topped them with a mini reeses' cup and then some milk chocolate shavings. Did I mention these were really really rich? Have a large glass of milk on hand if you decide to try out this recipe. It is required!



Animal print cupcake liners? YES PLEASE!



Chocolate Cupcakes:

(You can use any recipe for these or even a box but here is the recipe I used)

3/4 C. butter

3 eggs

2 C. flour

3/4 C. unsweetened cocoa powder

1 tsp. baking soda

3/4 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

2 C. sugar

2 tsp. vanilla

1 1/2 C. milk

1. Allow butter and eggs to stand at room temp. for 30 minutes & preheat oven to 350 degrees, mix together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt in medium bowl and set aside.

2. In a large bowl beat butter with mixer for 30 seconds and gradually add sugar until combined. Beat until light and fluffy. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating after each addition. Beat in Vanilla.

3. Alternate adding flour mixture and milk to butter bowl. *

4. Spoon into cupcake liners (in your pan) and bake for 18-22 minutes. Allow to cool before decorating.

* after all the ingredients were mixed well I used a spatula to fold in the peanut butter cup chunks.

Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Frosting

1. Allow one 8 ounce package of cream cheese to stand for 30 minutes at room temp.

2. In large bowl beat cream cheese with 1/2 C. creamy peanut butter & 2 tsp. vanilla.

3. Gradually add 6* C. powdered sugar. Add milk 1 tsp. at a time until you reach the consistency you would like for spreading or piping the frosting.

* I did not use 6 C. of powdered sugar. I found the icing to be plenty sweet at 4 1/2!

Indulgence at it's finest!