Reese Cupcakes

Today is Brian's birthday!  HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my gorgeous husband!  In honor of his birthday, I made cupcakes!  Baking is not really my thing.  It's messy and I hate having temptations around because I have no self control when it comes to chocolate.  All that being said, it was amazing making this from stratch (except the Reese cup part).  I think in the future I will always try to make things from scratch as opposed from a box.  It's a much bigger feeling of self accomplishment and it's not really that difficult! 

For this recipe I used a chocolate cake recipe and added a Reese's Cup to each cupcake liner.  They turned out delicious, but the bottoms of my cupcakes stuck to the paper liners.  I'm not sure if this is because I used paper liners (instead of foil) or if I cooked them just a little too long (22 minutes) and maybe the bottom burnt a little?  The rest of the cupcake is fine so I'm leaning toward the paper liners being the culprit.

Here's the cake recipe:
Makes 30 cupcakes or 1 cake
Ingredients
2 c sugar
1 3/4 c all-purpose flour
3/4 c hershey's cocoa
1 1/2 t baking powder
1 1/2 t baking soda
1 t salt
2 eggs
1 c milk
1/2 c vegetable oil
2 t vanilla extract
1 c boiling water

Method
Preheat oven to 350F.  Grease and flour two 9-inch round baking pans (if making the cake).

Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl.  Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla.  Beat on medium speed for 2 minutes.  Stir in boiling water (batter will be thin). 

Pour batter into prepared pans.  Bake 30-35 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Or for the cupcake version: Put the liners in the pans.  Add a reese's cup to each liner.  Add batter over the reese cup.  And fill about 2/3 full.  bake 22-25 minutes. Cool completely.  Frost!

Peanut Butter Icing
Ingredients
Peanut butter (I used about 2 c for 1/2 of the above recipe - which really made 20 cupcakes since the reese's cup takes up some room).
dash of milk
dash of vanilla
powdered sugar to desired consistency

Mix peanut butter, vanilla and milk.  Add sugar to get desired consistency.  I used enough sugar until the peanut better was moldable (and not sticky).

Yum!  Here's a picture!