Sour Cream Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting

It's been a while since I've baked. I'm sad to say that. But today, I had all of the ingredients so I decided to go ahead and try these out. This is a super fast recipe. You can make it in no time and the ingredients are things that you usually have on hand so that makes this even better. The chocolate stout cupcakes are definitely my most favorite recipe, but they're a bit time consuming so for the sake of time, these were a good alternative. The cupcake batter is super runny, and it uses not only oil, but sour cream as well. Those two components create a super moist cake. The peanut butter frosting was not peanut buttery enough for me so I added an additional 1/3 cup of it. I liked the idea of putting cream cheese into the frosting-it just created a wonderful creamy texture and surprisingly not a lot of tang. I decided to top half of them with chopped salted peanuts.

Sour Cream-Chocolate Cupcakes
Recipe courtesy of Sky High Cakes

1 cup flour
1 1/4 cup sugar
3/8 cup dutch process cocoa*
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup water
1 tsp vanilla
1 Tbsp white vinegar
1 egg
Peanut Butter Frosting, recipe follows

Preheat oven to 350. Spray the tops and line two muffin pans with 13 cupcake liners.

Add dry ingredients to the bowl of your stand mixer. Turn on low and add sour cream and oil. When completely mixed, add water in 1/4-cup increments until the batter is uniform. Add vanilla, vinegar, and the egg, mixing on medium until combined. The batter will be very runny. Using a cookie scooper, scoop the batter into the cupcake liners, filling 3/4 full.

Bake for ~23 minutes, until a skewer inserted in a center cupcake comes out with moist crumbs attached. Let cool in pan for 20 minutes and then cool on wire rack completely before frosting.

Yields 13-14 cupcakes

Peanut Butter Frosting
5 oz cream cheese, at room temp
4 Tbsp butter, at room temp
pinch of salt
3 cups powdered sugar
2/3 cup peanut butter

Beat cream cheese and butter on high, until light and creamy (2-3 minutes). Mix in salt and powdered sugar on low speed until just combined and then beat on high for 2-3 minutes, until the frosting is fluffy. Add peanut butter and mix on high until completely combined.