Guest Post: Chocolate cupcakes with Peanut Butter frosting

Don't these look amazing?!  I assure you, they are.  My friend Torie made these once last year for her smallgroup.  I begged her to be in her smallgroup because I wanted a cupcake!  Okay, so food motivates me.  :-)  Anyway, being the sweetheart she is, she brought me 4 of them.  One for each person in my family, but she didn't blame me when I wanted them all to myself.  heehee!  

I told Torie she should guest post for me on my blog, but she wanted it to be a joint effort.  So last week, I joined her in her kitchen to make these.  Torie is an amazing cook, baker, sewer (or is the technical term seamstress?), photographer, home-schooling mom.  I know there's more that she does, and I'm continually amazed at her talents.  So, Here is my friend Torie:

Cake Recipe: 

1(18.25 ounce) package devil’s food cake mix
1 (5.9 ounce) package instant chocolate pudding mix
1 cup sour cream
1 cup vegetable oil 

4 eggs
1/2 cup water 

She's so organized...everything laid out for us.

Directions :

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a large bowl, mix together the cake and pudding mix, sour cream, oil, beaten eggs and water and pour batter into 2 well greased 8 inch pans or evenly distribute between 12 and 24 cupcakes. One note: this batter is thick so don’t be surprised by that. 

Bake for 15-20 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.

Peanut butter frosting:
1/2 cup butter (room temp)
1 1/4 cup creamy peanut butter
1 1/3 cups confectioners' sugar
1/3 cup cream

Cream Peanut butter and butter together.  Add sugar and cream alternating until you have the desired consistency. What I did was slowly added the sugar 1/3 cup at a time with 1 Tbs cream. after I mixed it I tasted it and repeated. It tasted best to me at 1 and 1 1/3 cup sugar.  It's VERY rich. I used ¼ cup of cocoa powder in half the frosting to do the swirl frosting.  Depending on consistency, you may need to add a little more cream with the cocoa powder.

To swirl the frosting, place 1/2 the frosting in one bag, and the other 1/2 (with cocoa) in another bag.  Then, put both bags in a larger bag and using a round tip frost away!   

Mmmm mmm!  I want to eat one NOW!  

Torie, thanks so much for the experience and the post.  Mostly thanks for the friendship.  :-)