Today I have been cooking, styling and taking snaps all day. It’s been heavenly. Literally just sat down to type (and share this little beauty with you all). I’m lucky enough to be doing some work with netmums, styling/shooting their most popular recipes. I couldn’t be happier to do this for them. Being in the kitchen creating family friendly food, then styling and shooting it – and this is work you say?! I feel very fortunate, very fortunate indeed (and very full).
In between making their tuna pasta bake and homemade chicken nuggets (I’ll share them soon, great family recipes) I whipped up these stunners. I don’t know why, I just felt the urge to create something very chocolatey and very gorgeous. My son is going to freeeeaaak when he sees these later!
I made half with crushed Maltesers in, and half without, as I wanted to see what both were like. What can I say, the ones with Maltesers in are guuuuuuud. Not tried ones without yet. I will, but at present my jeans are about to pop open under the strain…
They are super easy and really pretty – anyone could do these. Have a go!
Makes: 12 (in theory, I managed to make 11 big ones!)
Prep time: 20 minutes (including icing them)
Cook time: 20 minutes
Total time: 40 minutes
Ingredients:
150g self-raising flour
150g caster sugar
100g butter, softened
2 eggs
3 tablespoons of milk
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
3 generous tablespoons of peanut butter
2 packets of Maltesers, crushed (I used one and only in half the mixture) optional
Chocolate cream cheese frosting (adapted into UK measurements from this great US blog):
100g cream cheese
50g butter
200g icing sugar
25g cocoa
Instructions:
- Preheat oven to 180C.
- Mix all the cupcake ingredients together, apart from Maltesers, with an electric whisk (if you’ve not got one just a normal whisk will do). Fold in the crushed Maltesers gently, last of all. Spoon into 12 large paper cupcake cases that are already placed in a muffin tin. (I only have a 6 hole tin, so make 6 at a time). Fill up to just under the paper top, no more.
- Bake for 20 minutes. Take out of tin and let cool before icing.
- Meanwhile, make your frosting. Simply beat all ingredients together with an electric whisk until smooth. You could use a hand whisk, it will just take longer. Expect an impromptu icing sugar cloud, which is quite fun actually!
- Smooth frosting over the cooled cakes with a teaspoon and decorate – or not – as your heart desires. I used little white chocolate dots to differentiate between the Malteser ones and ‘plain’ peanut butter ones. Enjoy!
