Peanut Butter Cupcakes with Apple Buttercream

I was sooooooooooo excited to find out this month’s cupcake hero ingredient – PEANUT BUTTER (or any kind of nut/soy butter). But I thought Peanut Butter?! Peanut butter is good with EVERYTHING! I automatically thought of some of the basic staples, PB&J (been done before – over and over again!), Peanut Butter and chocolate (also super delicious but constantly overdone as well). hmmmmmm.

So I got to thinking about my favorite ways to eat peanut butter and DUH! PEANUT BUTTER AND APPLES (the best snack EVER!).

It was so basic and so simple and after some thorough google-searching I found no recipes or anything like this done for a cupcake, so it was a no-brainer. I decided to go with a basic peanut butter cupcake recipe and try my hand at “inventing” an apple buttercream.

The end result was delicious. The actual cupcake held its shape and didn’t crumble all over the place as you bit into it, it was definitely peanut buttery-y but not over the top, it was just enough. I also made it with whole-wheat flour and all-natural PB, YUM!

The icing – there were a few problems. I am amerture-baker as they get and probably shouldn’t even attempt “inventing” things but I’m just that kind of girl :-) anywho, I LOVED the flavor of the icing, so good! but it was not as…stable? as I’d have liked it to be. You had to just kind of slap it on top – not much for looks, and I love pretty cupcakes so that was a little annoying.

all in all though, it was rockin’