Peanut Butter Pumpkin Cupcakes with White Chocolate Frosting

Wow. Just wow. These cupcakes are spectacular. I absolutely adore the flavor combination of peanut butter, pumpkin and white chocolate. May sound strange, but believe me. It’s crazy good!

I’m really excited about this recipe, because it is the most me recipe I’ve made so far for this blog. Most of my recipes are from other people, but I had to get creative for these cupcakes. I wanted the three flavors in a cake or cupcake, but my pinterest searching revealed nothing. OH sure, lots of pumpkin and peanut butter recipes. But no white chocolate. Or pumpkin and white chocolate, but no peanut butter. I’ve topped my pumpkin muffins with pb before, and also with white chocolate frosting. Recently I tried both together and fell in love. But the muffin texture was a little too dense. So I found a recipe for spiced pumpkin buttermilk cake and swapped out some of the butter for peanut butter. The batter is so creamy good. When they were out of the oven, I topped the cupcakes with some leftover white chocolate frosting that I had from the previous post’s chocolate coffee cupcakes. I was so excited that I frosted them a tad too soon. As you can see, the frosting got a little melty. I guess the cupcakes weren't completely cool! Oh well... I can’t wait for Joe to come home and try them. I’m tempted to eat the rest right now though :)

The Goods:

2 and ¼ cups flour

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

4 ½ tsp. pumpkin pie spice *

4 ½ tsp. salt

1 and ⅓ cups canned pumpkin

¾ cup buttermilk (I never buy buttermilk. I make my own with milk and lemon juice. For 1 cup of milk, add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and let sit for 5 min)

1 tsp. vanilla

2/3 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

⅓ cup peanut butter

1 cup granulated sugar

¼ cup brown sugar

3 eggs

*  An alternative to pumpkin pie spice:

2 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. ground allspice

¾ tsp. nutmeg

½ tsp. ground ginger

¼ tsp. ground cloves

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease cupcake trays or cake pan of choice. 

Combine flour, soda, powder, salt, spice (or spices)

In another bowl, combine pumpkin, vanilla and milk.

Beat the butter, peanut butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Add the eggs. Then add flour mixture and pumpkin mixture, alternating between the two while mixing in.

Spoon cupcake trays about ¾ full and bake for about 18 min or until toothpick comes out clean. Crumbs are ok, but not wet gooey stuff.

If you’re making a cake, it will need longer in the oven. Maybe 45 minutes. This should make about 22-24 cupcakes

After cupcakes are cooled completely. Frost with white chocolate frosting. You can find the recipe in my last post: http://heidibakesforjoe.blogspot.com/2015/10/a-job-and-celebratory-chocolate-coffee.html