Chocolate chip peanut butter cupcakes with vanilla frosting

You guys, I'm 22! It was my birthday yesterday! #feeling22

But this isn't a post about my birthday, you've got that one coming your way soonish, dear chums.

This, is a post about cake.

Peanut butter cupcakes...

...with chocolate chips...

... and vanilla cream cheese frosting...

...AND SPRINKLES!

Oh yes.

I've somehow started my own tradition of baking peanut butter cake in some shape or form for my birthday. (For example, these peanut butter and nutella cupcakes and this triple layer chocolate, peanut butter and nutella cake.) I didn't feel like I could break the tradition now, hence chocolate chip peanut butter cupcakes with vanilla frosting. What else?

Actually, I made cupcakes and fairy cakes, but potayto potahto, yes?

They all went down a treat at my tea party, if I do say so myself!

Being the dutiful hostess that I am, I couldn't have possibly served my guests something without trying it first myself. So, having baked the cakes the night before my birthday but not yet iced them, I figured this was a totally justifiable birthday breakfast:

Like, yum!

And I'm going to be honest with you, I simply adore these cakes.

The sponge in itself is beautifully peanut buttery and moist thanks to the yoghurt, and I love the little chocolate chunks for some texture excitement.

The icing's pretty dreamy too.

A mix of butter and cream cheese - predominantly the latter - it's not too heavy. I even used low-fat cream cheese so this is basically diet food. Ahem.

The subtle vanilla flavour is divine and texture is rather lush. It cannot be denied.

And one of the things I love most about cupcakes is they provide you with a reason to get out the sprinkles. SPRINKLES!

I often think the simplest of decoration looks the best, but I find sprinkles too much fun to stick with one type.

So yeah, I spent ages picking out the appropriate letters for these ones. But it was worth it.

Cake is always worth it.

I started with a simple "HI", then got more ambitious.

These cupcakes aren't fancy, but they're just gosh darn delicious.

I made 12 BIG cupcakes and 9 fairy cakes. But I may have also eaten a fair amount of the mixture as I went. Because it's really tasty. So I reckon if you have more willpower and are only making cupcakes, you should get around 17-18.

Don't forget to take your butter and eggs out of the fridge in advance!

Ingredients

200g butter, softened, plus extra for greasing
3 heaped tbsp smooth peanut butter
4 large eggs
250g golden caster sugar
150g pot natural yogurt
200g self-raising flour
75g chocolate chunks/chips/chopped bar

For the topping:
50g softened butter
100g cream cheese
1tsp vanilla extract
350g icing sugar
sprinkles of your choice

Method

1. Line a muffin tin with paper cases and preheat the oven to 180C. Using hand-held electric beaters, beat the butter, peanut butter, eggs, sugar and yoghurt together until smooth and creamy.

2. Add the flour and chocolate chunks...

...then carefully fold it all together until no flour bits remain. Spoon into the muffin cases, filling each one to about 1cm below the top.

3. Bake for about 25 mins until risen and golden (or 15 mins for the fairy cakes). Leave to cool in the tin for about five minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool fully.

4. When the cakes are fully cool, it's time to ice them. Simply beat together the butter, cream cheese, icing sugar and vanilla until creamy, whipped, thick and smooth (I find it's best to start with a spoon so the icing sugar doesn't go everywhere, then move on to an electric whisk - the longer you beat, the fluffier your icing will be.)