Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cupcakes in Cleveland Browns colors

September 6, 2014 by

Wanna taste 2 of the 100 Best Cupcake Recipes? At least, according to this cupcake cookbook called “100 Best Cupcake Recipes,” these two easy cupcake recipes are “sensational,” paired in chocolate and peanut butter. But are they good enough for a Cleveland Browns victory?

The challenge: 
Bake some cute football-themed cupcakes for a Cleveland Browns pre-season tailgate party. Look for inspiration in chocolate-frosted footballs, makeshift goalposts, and tedious turf icing topped with mini almond footballs, and decide that Pinterest bakers must have much more time on their hands than I do.

Back to basics: 
Brown and orange. Simplicity will let the flavor speak for itself, right? So I abandon Pinterest and turn to my cookbook shelf for guidance. Dreaming of Reese’s, I land on these two in the cupcake cookbook: Celebration Chocolate Cupcakes and Peanut Butter Cupcakes. (See recipes below)

Game time:
Teams quickly took sides with the cupcake choices in the field. The Celebration Chocolate Cupcakes were easily the crowd favorite at the tailgate…but when I shared some with friends a couple nights later, everyone there preferred Peanut Butter.

Final score:
Peanut Butter and Chocolate Cupcakes are both winners.
Go Browns.

Celebration Chocolate Cupcakes
(Originally for mini cupcakes, but I doubled it 
to make this recipe for a dozen jumbo cupcakes)
1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
4 tablespoons cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup water
6 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 teaspoons white vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare cupcake tins with paper or foil liners.
2. Mix dry ingredients in a medium bowl, then add wet ingredients and beat with whisk or mixer on medium speed until well blended. Fill cupcake tins 3/4 full with batter.
3. Bake 12 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Cool completely and frost with…chocolate frosting from a can, if you’re lazy like me.

Chocolate Celebration Cupcakes
from “100 Best Cupcake Recipes”
Publications International Ltd.
Peanut Butter Cupcakes
(Originally frosted with chocolate peanut butter frosting, but I needed orange 
frosting for Browns colors, so I used  vanilla icing with red and yellow dye.)
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup butter, softened
1/3 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/4 cups milk

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare cupcake tins with paper or foil liners.
2. Mix first three ingredients in medium bowl. Then, beat butter and peanut butter in another large bowl with mixer at medium speed until smooth. Beat in sugars until mixed, and then beat in eggs and vanilla. Add flour mixture alternately with milk, beginning and ending with dry ingredients. Fill cupcake tins 3/4 full with batter – these do not round off like the chocolate ones do so you can fill them a little fuller.
3. Bake 20 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Cool completely and frost.

Filed Under: cupcake recipes, dessert recipes, Food Tagged With: , , ,

“Double Treat” Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

May 27, 2012 by
I don’t need bookmarks in my cookbooks. They naturally fall open to the most oft-used pages, guided by oil stains and batter splatters and clouds of flour.
The page where this Double Treat Cookie recipe is located is one of these.
  
These come from the one and only Church Cookbook: the blue-covered “Brethren Favorites From Yellow Creek” compiled by members of Yellow Creek Church of the Brethren in Goshen, Indiana. I received my own copy of it (at last!) on my 23rd birthday by my mom.
It didn’t happen right away, but over the years, page 85 has become stained with grease and splotches of dough from various stages of mixing.  (You’re probably beginning to understand, now, why my sister doesn’t like me baking in her kitchen – or, at least, leaving behind the aftermath of my baking.)
I think my go-to chocolate chip cookies are still the chocolate chip pudding cookies (four pages before this recipe in the same cookbook), but I think the pudding mix starts to bring back bad memories of overabundant Amish Friendship Bread starters….More recently, my common chocolate chip cookie craving is accompanied by a peanut butter hunger. And those times call for these cookies.

Double Treat Cookies

2 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup shortening (2 sticks butter)
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup peanut butter
1 package (12 oz) chocolate chips
1 cup chopped peanuts, optional (I’ll pass, thanks.)
Beat together shortening, sugars, eggs and vanilla until fluffy.
Blend in peanut butter. Add dry ingredients.
Add chocolate chips (and peanuts, if you wish.)
Shape dough into small balls. Place on ungreased baking sheet (of course, I always use a silicone baking mat.) Flatten with the bottom of a glass that’s been dipped in sugar. Bake at 325 degrees for 8 minutes.
Makes about 4 dozen.

Filed Under: cookie recipes, dessert recipes, Food Tagged With: ,