Surprise Chocolate Cupcakes with a Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Frosting

We were celebrating my cousin's 21st birthday this weekend...a couple months late....his birthday was in January, but, I love any occasion to bake something so I didn't care that it wasn't actually his birthday! I asked him what kind of dessert he wanted and he said that he liked any kind of cake and that he didn't really care what I made. His favorite candy are reesee's peanut butter cups so I decided to make chocolate surprise cupcakes with a peanut butter cream cheese frosting. I used a Hershey's chocolate cake recipe that I use for basically every chocolate cake or cupcake recipe I make. I swear by this recipe so try it out! It is the most delicious and moist chocolate cake and cupcake recipe that I have ever made and it is very easy to put together. Everyone raves about how moist the cake is whenever I make it. The peanut butter cream cheese frosting makes this cupcake...it is so tasty! Everyone loved these cupcakes so give them a try!

What you will need:

-1 chocolate cake recipe (recipe following)

-1 recipe for peanut butter cream cheese frosting (recipe following)

-24 mini reesee's peanut butter cups plus about 8 roughly chopped reese's peanut butter cups

Hershey's "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Cake recipe (Hershey's Best-Loved recipes)

-2 cups sugar

-1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

-3/4 cup HERSHEY'S cocoa

-1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

-1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

-1 teaspoon salt

-2 eggs

-1 cup milk

-1/2 cup vegetable oil

-2 teaspoons vanilla extract

-1 cup boiling water

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Line cupcake pans with 24 cupcake liners.

2. Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Add eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla; beat on medium speed of mixer for 2 minutes. Stir in water. (Batter will be thin.) Pour batter evenly into cupcake pans. ( I filled mine 3/4 full and got 24 cupcakes.)

3. Bake 22-25 minutes. Cool on a wire rack for about 10 minutes and carefully remove cupcakes from cupcake pan.

4. While still slightly warm, scoop out a small circle in the middle each cupcake ( I used a apple corer and it worked out perfectly) and place a mini reese's peanut butter cup inside of the warm cupcake.

The cupcakes will look like this! The reese's will melt just a little bit. (Sorry I don't have a picture of a cupcake with just a scooped out center...I didn't think about it until now!)

6. Let the cupcakes cool completely and then frost with the peanut butter cream cheese frosting and top each cupcake evenly with the chopped reesee's peanut butter cups.

Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Frosting: ( This cream cheese recipe is my Grandma's that she uses on her carrot cake and I am not sure where she got it from and then I just added peanut butter to it!)

Ingredients:

-1 stick unsalted butter, softened

-1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened

-1 (1 lb. box) powdered sugar

-1 teaspoon vanilla

-2/3 cup peanut butter

Directions:

1. Beat the butter and cream cheese together until light and fluffly.

2. Slowly beat in the powdered sugar.

3. Add the vanilla and peanut butter and mix until combined.

Enjoy!!!