Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes

If you love cupcakes like we do, don’t miss our complete collection for your favorite cupcake recipes! Today’s Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcake will surely top your list.

A rich chocolate cupcake filled and topped with smooth peanut butter buttercream. It’s the perfect combination.

How to Make Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes This versatile chocolate cupcake recipe is one of our favorites! You can also use it for layer cakes and easily change up your fillings and frosting flavors for more delicious options.

Use Pondan Chocolate Muffin mix to make the cupcakes below and add the filling/topping below. Follow the instructions on how to make cupcakes on the back of the Pondan Chocolate Muffin box.

BUTTERCREAM PEANUT BUTTER

1 cup Creamy Peanut Butter (Do not use Natural or Reduced Fat Peanut Butter as the consistency won’t be the same.)
1 cup (226g) unsalted butter, slightly softened
4 cups (460g) powdered sugar, sifted (measure, then sift)
¼ cup (60g) milk (Add a little more if you want a thinner consistency)
2 teaspoons (8g) vanilla extract
pinch of salt

DECORATION

Mini Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups or Reese’s Thins or other brands, etc. for topping

INSTRUCTIONS

Preheat the oven to 350°F (182 degrees C). In a separate bowl, add flour, sifted cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Stir until well combined and set aside.
In your mixer bowl, beat unsalted butter at medium speed until light and fluffy. Add vegetable oil and vanilla. Gradually add sugar and beat until light and fluffy, about 4 to 5 minutes. Add eggs one at a time, mixing after each egg just until the yellow disappears. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl as needed.
At low speed, alternately add flour mixture and milk to sugar mixture, beginning and ending with dry ingredients. (3 additions of dry ingredients and 2 additions of milk)
Add a cup of hot coffee at this point and stir until smooth. The batter will be very thin. Don’t worry, this is how it should be.
This recipe makes 9 cups of batter (enough for 36 cupcakes)
Line cupcake pans with cupcake liners. Fill each liner with about ¼ cup of batter. Bake at 350°F for 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick can be inserted and removed with no crumbs or just a few crumbs sticking (or when the center springs back when gently touched).
Remove cupcakes from pans immediately after removing from oven. (We do this within a few minutes of removal)

PEANUT BUTTER BUTTERCREAM

In your mixer bowl, add butter and beat at medium speed until smooth and creamy. Add peanut butter and mix until combined. Gradually add powdered sugar alternating with milk. Add vanilla. Beat at medium speed for 4 to 5 minutes until smooth.

CUPCAKE DECORATION

We also fill the inside of our cupcakes with frosting. This is optional. To do this, we insert a filled piping bag (with the tip cut off) into the top of each cupcake and push it halfway down, squeezing the bag for 2-3 seconds. (You can experiment if you have extra cupcakes, or just spray for 2-3 seconds onto a plate to get an idea of how much filling you’ll be putting in.)

Time to frost!

Frost as desired. We added a basic swirl on top of our cupcakes using a 1M piping tip. We started in the center and spiraled outward while holding the bag vertically. We topped our cupcakes with pieces of Reese’s Cups (We used Reese’s Cups “Thins” but you can use mini cups if you prefer!).