Recipe: Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes

Chef Ranveer Brar salty-sweet Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes are a treat!

Photograph: Kind courtesy Hershey India

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes

Serves: 3-4

Ingredients

110 gm maida or all-purpose flour
¼ tsp baking powder
110 gm butter
70 gm sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
1½ tbsp peanut butter, smooth variety
3 tbsp chocolate syrup
Caramelised peanuts, to garnish, optional

For the icing

50 gm butter
100 gm icing sugar
½ tbsp peanut butter
¼ tsp sea salt
1 tbsp caramel-flavoured syrup

Method

For the cupcakes

Preheat the oven to 160°C for 10 minutes.
In a bowl, mix the flour, baking powder.
Keep aside.
In another bowl, cream the butter and the sugar.
Add the eggs, vanilla essence.
Mix well
Add the flour mixture and blend to form a batter.
Keep aside.

For the centre filling

Mix the peanut butter and the chocolate syrup and put it in a piping bag.
Pour the flour-egg-butter-sugar batter into a lined muffin or cupcake tray.
In the centre of each cup of batter in the tray, pipe a little filling.
Bake it at 160°C for 25-30 minutes.
Insert a toothpick into the cupcake to check if done.
If it comes out clean, the cupcakes are ready.
Cool.

For the icing

In a bowl, mix all the icing ingredients together till smooth.
Fill in a piping bag with a star nozzle.
Pipe onto the cooled cupcakes.
Add the caramelised peanuts on top for some crunch.

Note: To make eggless cupcakes replace the two eggs with 2 tbsp chia seeds + 6 tbsp water.

To make them vegan, also replace the butter in the icing and the cupcake batter with cashew butter, available online or make your ownm[external link] but add a pinch more salt if it contains no salt.

To make them gluten free, replace the all-purpose flour with oats flour or almond flour.

Weightwatchers can avoid the icing and the centre filling and for low-salt cupcakes, skip/reduce the salt, use unsalted butter and replace the peanut butter with unsalted cashew butter or unsalted peanut butter.

Chef Ranveer Brar is an author MasterChef India judge and restaurateur with over 25 years of experience in the food industry.