Chocolate Peanut Butter Surprise Cupcakes

Chocolate and peanut butter is a combination that never gets old in my book.  I have made these exact cupcake combination multiple times.  However, this time around, I added a surprise element.  A few of the cupcakes had a mini reese peanut butter cup inside.  Next time, I would toss them in some flour as they did sink all the way to the bottom.

Peanut Butter Frosting
A Baked By Jen Original
Makes enough to generously frost 24 cupcakes

1/2 cup of butter
1 cup of peanut butter
3 cups of powdered sugar, sifted
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1/4 cup of milk

Beat the butters together until light and fluffy.  Add the powdered sugar.  Add the vanilla extract. Add enough milk until desired consistency is reached.

Tin Roof Ice Cream

I can't believe that summer is already coming to an official end with Labor Day weekend approaching just around the corner.  To top it off, I did not make a single batch of ice cream this entire summer!  With that realization, I decided to tackle tin roof ice cream which has been bookmarked in my copy of The Perfect Scoop for quite some time now.

The ice cream had so many different components but if you stick to a component a day, it's not as labor intensive as it seems.

First, I made the fudge ripple.

Then, I made the chocolate covered peanuts.

Last, I made the vanilla ice cream base.

I 've had huge successes with the philadephia style vanilla ice cream but this time, I went with the french style vanilla ice cream.  The egg yolks made a world of a difference!  It was so rich and creamy.  My test tasters thought they were eating caramel ice cream.

Though summer is officially coming to an end, I definitely don't see that as a reason to stop making.. and eating ice cream.  This batch only encouraged me to step out of my hiatus.

New York Style Crumb Cake

My to bake list, a collection of ideas off the Internet, is growing out of control.  In addition, I have 3 new, now months old, cookbooks which I haven't made a single recipe out of yet.  It was clearly a sign that I was neglecting my oven.  So this week, I did two things.  One, I added my to bake list here to my blog to help move things along.  Two, I made a crumb cake out of the Baked Explorations cookbook which I received months ago for my birthday.

What I learned is that crumb cake is not interchangeable with coffee cake in New York.  A crumb cake does not contain cinnamon swirls nor nuts of any kind.  Those elements were not missed at all in this crumb cake.  I did reduce the "crumb" topping by half but the cake and the crumb topping still balanced each other out perfectly.

My Niece, The Future Baker

I can't believe that Cake4Kids.org's second annual CakeOff-4Kids event is already taking place next month!  I entered last year and won the best decorated category but this year, I wanted a chance to taste the 50 cakes by other volunteers.  However, my 10 year old niece will be entering the kids' 15 and under category.  In preparation for the event, she asked to come over and make a cake for her Dad's birthday party this past weekend.  She did an amazing job!  I was quite impressed with her piping skills.

Cake was Baking Illustrated's Yellow Layer Cake which is now a go to yellow cake recipe for me.  It wasn't too sweet and very fluffy.  She frosted the cake with the Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Frosting.  The writing was done with melted candy melts.