Reese's Peanut-butter Cups

I am so incredibly sorry, my little baking fiends.


Regular readers may have noticed that I haven't posted in quite some time and for this my dear friends, I sincerely apologize. All I can offer you in return is to fill you in on the reasons for my absence.
So, as I mentioned in my last post, I have now  moved away from the warm bosom of North London, sad. And I am now a full time university student. Yay.
So, the past two weeks have involved packing, unpacking, meeting, greeting and having the same conversations over and over again. Seriously, I should just wear a sticker that says:


Name: Lily
Subject: Geography
From: London
It would have saved a lot of time. Oh well, too late now. I have met a lot of new people and learned (and forgotten) a lot of names. 
Sadly the only cooking appliances I can use in my block are a kettle and a microwave, which means that I am going to have some serious difficulties doing any actual baking. 
So if you have any microwaveable recipes please send 'em my way!
You will all be pleased to know I joined cake society at university. Which means hopefully I will get my baking fix at least once a month and meet many other cake-minded people by whipping up some doughy goodness with them. 


Although baking may be difficult here, fear not. I baked up a storm before I left so I still have many recipes to share with you that I have not posted yet.
I was going to save this recipe for a dark, lonely day but in my absence I think you guys earned it. Its a good 'un so treasure it like your child. 


This recipe began with a trip to the holy baking grail of, Lakeland. I saw these cute little cupcake cases and knew I just had to get them. The ikkle orange ones reminded me of the Reese's packaging and I had been wanting to make brownies anyway so I played around with chocolate and peanut butter, which is always fun, and came up with these! The brownie is gooey in the middle and chewy on the edge and the peanut butter frosting is like heaven in a bowl. 
If you only bake one of my recipes make this it.

Cute little cases

Fills about 36 mini cupcake cases
250g Butter
115g Unsweetened Cocoa (I use Green & Blacks)
4 Eggs
450g Caster sugar
55g Plain flour
60g Self-raising flour
1tsp Vanilla Extract


Pre-heat oven to 170 degrees Celcius


1. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over a low heat with the cocoa powder. Then let it cool.
I warn you, as good as this looks DO NOT stick your finger in it, it will taste disgusting.
 Don't do it...........
I told you so.
The cocoa is unsweetened so it tastes very very bitter, such a disappointment.

Does NOT taste as good as it looks

2. Mix up the butter and the sugar and slowly add the eggs so it looks creamy and delicious. Then add a splash of vanilla.

3. Now for the fun part. slowly poor the room temperature chocolate mixture into the batter and watch the magic as the mixture makes pwetty patterns.

Watch the pretty chocolate 

get darker....

...and darker.

4. Sift in the flour so the mixture thickens to a spoon-able texture. 

Mixy, mix

This is how the mixture should look: 
Try your hardest not to spoon it straight into your mouth. 
OK then, just one. Maybe two. Now STOP or there will be none left to bake.

Gooey chocolaty  goodness

5. Spoon the deliciousness into the mini-cupcake cases filling it 2/3 full. I put them into a cupcake tray but of course the tray was way to big so it did very little to hold the shape of the cupcake. But because of the magical brownie mixture the cupcakes turned out reasonably circular. Yay. 
Bake for about 10 mins. But check on them after 7 mins, the brownie should be just set in the middle.

The little cupcake was much to big for the tray

6. Some of mine sunk in the middle, which is a massive baking faux pas. 
How embarrassing.
But there is a simple way to fix this. As soon as the cupcakes come out of the oven turn them upside-down on the cooling rack. Gravity stops them from sinking. Science is so cool.

This was the batch that did not receive the magic anti-sinking treatment. 

7. Now, if you thought the brownies were good, just wait for this heaven sent frosting. 
These quantities are in no way exact because I didn't write it down as I was doing it. Silly Lily. So play around with the proportions until you get it about right. Mine turned out slightly too runny which made it difficult to pipe it evenly.


1 table spoon of butter
3 table spoons of smooth peanut butter
2 cups of icing sugar powder


First mix together the softened butter and peanut butter and the slowly sift in the icing sugar.

Creamy peanut butter goodness

Beat it on high until the texture is smooth and even. Bag it up and pipe it on.

Yummy

Chewy, creamy, chocolaty with a squeeze of peanut butter heaven

Homemade Reeses Peanutbutter Cups

I am sorry for being so unreliable I promise to post more regularly in da future. If not I give you permission to hound me like a fat kid who wants cake.