Peanut Butter Pretzel Cupcakes

Our second at bat in this week's test kitchen (and second home run) was a Peanut Butter Pretzel Cupcake.  If you are a fan of sweet and salty, which I am-- BIG TIME, you'll love this one.  This cupcake is based off of a cupcake made at a bakery I like; we didn't think up this combination of flavors.  But we were very excited to try our hand at it with our own recipes for its components.

The cake is a chocolate cake made with melted bittersweet chocolate that packs a pretty strong chocolate punch.  The frosting is our fluffy peanut butter frosting we recently invented for our Elvis cupcakes.  On top of the frosting we rolled crushed salted pretzels that give the cupcakes a great crunch and that delicious salty and sweet combination.  And because one kind of frosting is just not enough, we added a chocolate buttercream blossom and kissed it with a peanut butter chip.  Ta-da!

Even cuter than the big ones?  The minis with their little chocolate buttercream dollops!

Hunk-a Hunk-a Tasty Cake

My partner in crime, Corinne, and I tested out this cupcake for our weekly "Test Kitchen" day.  (We're trying out new recipes each week until she leaves for Argentina in March.  It's sort of a resolution of ours.)  This cupcake isn't just any old cupcake.  It's a cupcake fit for a king.  Actually, it's a cupcake fit for the King.  Elvis Presley, that is.

Elvis was known for eating fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches.  Some people say he ate them with bacon, some people say he put honey on them, and some people just say he stuck with the pb & banana.  Well, the idea of bacon on a cupcake kind of grosses us out, so we went with the pb, banana, and honey combo. 

The cake is a moist banana cake (same recipe I made last week, but without the nuts).  We used a star tip (star tip, get it??) to pipe on some yummy peanut butter icing that has a great peanut butter taste and a little bit of a lighter, whipped consistency.  And we finished them off with a drizzling of honey.  Good idea?  "Thank ya, thank ya very much!"

PB&J

Who doesn't love a good old peanut butter and jelly sandwich?  Nobody.  But what's the one thing it may be missing?  Frosting, you say?  Not anymore.  


I had what I believe to be an ingenious idea the other day: to make a pb&j cupcake.  I have personally never seen it done before and so I whipped up this baby.  And I have to say that I'm really (and I mean really) excited about it.  


I made a vanilla peanut butter batter for the cupcakes.  If you're wondering what heaven smells like, it's vanilla peanut butter cake baking.  I promise.  Then I filled each cupcake with raspberry jam, iced them with a swirled peanut butter/raspberry frosting, and topped each with chopped salted peanuts.  It's the perfect mix of salty and sweet, and it's the only thing better than a pb&j.  

If you would like to order these cupcakes, please contact me at susangietl@hotmail.com.  Minimum quantity is one dozen.  Pricing information will be coming soon to the blog.

Special thanks to Mr. Murphy Randle for turning my little Suzy Sweet Tooth sketch into the cute new logo!  It looks great!