Search this site

Maison Cupcake

Home Cooking and Baking by Sarah Trivuncic

  • Home
  • About
  • Recipes
    • Baking and Desserts
    • Family Food Ideas
    • Party Food Ideas
  • Misc
    • Journal
    • Classes and Events
You are here: Home / Recipes / Baking and Desserts / Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes

October 27, 2009 by Sarah Trivuncic 3 Comments

This site content is free. When you purchase via referral links on our posts, including those to Amazon, we earn affiliate commission, at no extra cost to yourself. Thanks for reading and please share posts you find useful!

Can pumpkin puree be used to make frosting for cupcakes? Absolutely.See below how I was inspired by this Harry Eastwood (of Cook Yourself Thin) recipe.

Going away on holiday is terribly inconvenient when you’re a food blogger. In the last month I’ve had both a weekend away to Provence and a week in Montenegro.  In between these trips my father was staying in the back bedroom keeping me away from the computer in the early morning and late evening when Ted is asleep.  Then when I returned from holiday something really awful happened.  I had no broadband for a week (I know… worse things have happened but it was very inconvenient). I should have been hard at work in the kitchen but the reality was that I was catching up on holiday laundry, clearing through the dregs of my yard sale and arguing with broadband technical support people about why they couldn’t put me back online until November 5th (I won – as you can see). The upshot of this is that my food blogging routine has been turned on it’s head in the past month and not a lot has made it from my table to the screen (though it managed to find my tummy quite easily).

Behind the scenes though I have been working towards cooking at least five recipes from Harry Eastwood’s Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache . Partly this was because I have been trying to eat less dairy produce and also because I couldn’t check the internet for the erratum of the Hummingbird Bakery Book which was previously my book of the month.  First up were these chocolate and peanut cupcakes onto which I added my own pumpkin puree buttercream (yes I found pumpkin puree at last!).  I chose them because they seemed Hallowe’en-ish without being too scary.

Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache is one of the prettiest and most atmospheric cookery books I have read since Joanne Harris’s French Market.  Harry Eastwood (best known for her Channel 4 series “Cook Yourself Thin” presents over 180 pages of cakes made with less butter and wheat flour and more vegetables.  Each recipe is depicted as being a personality such as scones who are “a choir of happy children” or Victoria Sponge who is “at the  Vicar’s house with a perfectly ironed apron”.

With no butter I was sceptical that this cake mix would be wet enough to come together but I need not have worried, the moisture comes from the peanuts and butternut squash. In fact, Eastwood ends each chapter with “Cake Diaries” where she shares details from less successful earlier versions of some recipes to give you an idea how they evolved (and a warning in case you should dare deviate in the same way). I had a bad experience with Donna Hay peanut butter cupcakes made last month so I was delighted to see these butter free cakes rising beautifully.  They taste delicious too.

The dismal Donna Hay peanut butter cupcakes

The other recipes I intend to cook from this book in the forthcoming weeks are Orange and Saffron Sand Cake, Beetroot and Chocolate Fudge, Caramel and Passionfruit Swiss Roll and definitely the eponymous Heartache Chocolate Cake which is made with 2 aubergines no less.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes

Ingredients:

  • 100g unsalted peanuts
  • 3 medium free range eggs
  • 200g light muscovado sugar
  • 200g peeled and finely grated butternut squash or pumpkin
  • 100g rice flour
  • 40g cocoa powder
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp salt

For the icing:

  • 60g smooth peanut butter
  • 2 tbsp icing sugar sieved
  • 2 tbsp cocoa powder
  • 5 tbsp boiling water

For my pumpkin icing:

  • 1 generous tbsp pumpkin puree
  • 100g icing sugar
  • 50g butter

The recipe for these chocolate and peanut butter cupcakes can be found on page 44 of Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache by Harry Eastwood, Bantam Press RRP £20.  

See how I got on making other Harry Eastwood recipes for check out the original version in Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache on Amazon.

This site content is free. When you purchase via referral links on our posts, including those to Amazon, we earn affiliate commission, at no extra cost to yourself. Thanks for reading and please share posts you find useful!
Filed Under: Baking and Desserts Tagged With: baking, cakes, chocolate, cupcakes, Halloween, Harry Eastwood, nuts, peanut, pumpkin

About Sarah Trivuncic

Sarah Trivuncic has published recipes, restaurant and travel reviews on Maison Cupcake since 2009. She lives in Walthamstow, East London with her husband and teenager.
Read More/Contact

« Appearing in Panto… Montenegro style
Scandi Kitchen Food Photography Class »

Comments

  1. Barbara Bakes says

    October 27, 2009 at 4:56 pm

    I love the idea of Cook Yourself Thin! I'm looking forward to all your posts from this book! The chocolate pumpkin cupcakes look wonderful!

    Reply
  2. deerbaby says

    October 27, 2009 at 8:50 pm

    Coincidentally I bought this book from Waitrose today and was thinking of giving these particular cupcakes a whirl so I'm glad you've roadtested the recipe for me already and it looks like they came up trumps!

    Reply
  3. Hilary says

    October 29, 2009 at 11:58 am

    Planning to make these ones for Halloween on Saturday!

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recipe Rating




© 2009-2025 Sarah Trivuncic

All content copyright of site owner
Sarah Trivuncic
except where otherwise stated. All rights reserved. Neither images or text may be reproduced without permission. Privacy / Disclosure

My Book

Cover of "Bake Me I'm Yours... Sweet Bitesize Bakes" by Sarah Trivuncic; image shows a selection of small cakes and patisserie. The book has a green polka dot spine edged with pink ribbon and a bow.

Copyright © 2025 · Foodie Pro Theme by Shay Bocks · Built on the Genesis Framework · Powered by WordPress

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.Accept Read More
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT