Going Peanuts

Peanut Butter was on sale I couldn't help myself to get my hands on a couple jars of those super crunchy legum pastes so that I could make some things out of them. However so, I kind of regreted it the moment I bought them as I was so busy packed with my design work, hence I resorted to make the simplest thing out of the peanut butter, and nothing beats throwing together a quick muffin!


The process is quick and easy, almost hassle free, which is good for time-less people like me, the outcome was great too!

Ingredients
2 cups Self-raising flour
1/2 cup Castor Sugar
1/2 tsp Salt
1 cup Chunky Peanut Butter
2 Eggs
1 cup Buttermilk
2 tbsp Butter

Topping - Chocolate Icing (optional)
100g Butter
2 cups Icing sugar
3 tbsp Cocoa powder
4 tbsp Milk


I couldn't help myself to whip up a quick frosting to compliment the pungent peanut-buttery taste of the muffins once they came out of the oven. The first thing that came to mind was a rich and creamy chocolate frosting, imagine the taste of both rich chocolate and peanut butter mingling and oozing inside your mouth! >.<

Method
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175-190 degrees C) and place the oven rack in the middle of the oven. Butter a 12 - 1/2 cup muffin pan or line with paper muffin liners.

2. Sift together the flour, sugar and salt in a large bowl. In another bowl, cut in peanut butter and butter until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add beaten eggs and beat with a wooden spoon until smooth. Add buttermilk a little at a time, stiring after each addition.

3. Pour peanut butter mixture over dry ingredients and fold in with a rubber spatula just until dry ingredients are moistened.

4.Spoon the batter into prepared muffin pans. Bake in preheated oven for 20-25 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centres comes out clean. Remove from oven and turn onto a wire rack to cool.

5. To make icing place butter in large bowl and use an electric mixer to beat until creamy, sift over the combined icing sugar and cocoa powder, and beat until well combined. Add the milk and beat until fluffy.

yield - 15 muffins

However, to my dismay, I could not find my piping bag in the 13th hour, hence I had to use a loose plastic bag (clean one definitely) to spread the frosting, the effect was not really that appealing as the plastic bag was not tight enough, thus the frosting ended up looking like sagged cream, wish it was firm and nice as other peoples' cupcakes! Anyhow, the taste was really superb, the peanut butter and the chocolate, simply delicious!

Yum Yum!