Channeling the "King"

Back in the groove with 13 new recipes this week - our favorites this time were the Cocoa-Peanut Butter Crisscrosses, Roasted Red Pepper, Chicken Sausage and Smoked Mozarella Potato-Crust Pizza, and the Tomato and Sausage Risotto.

Sunday morning is our grocery shopping day and we didn't know if we were going to be able to go today as an impending ice storm was suppose to happen. We woke up to only cloudy skies and by the time we left it it was just beginning to snow. About halfway through our trip, the snow really started to become heavy and it took us about an extra 30 minutes to get home. So, instead of this large ice storm they were calling for, we got lots of bright white heavy snow! We are very happy it was not ice again like last week - but it is going to be a pain to get things shoveled! As you can see, the Alpaca's and Max are certainly enjoying their time in the snow!

What else is there to do when the weather is like this but get some baking done, right? We went for something a little smaller this time and made these King Cupcakes. The cupcakes baked up with a fine crown and a moist mildly banana-flavored inside that makes for an ideal foundation for a heaping pile of sweet frosting.

And what would be a perfect match to a light banana cupcake than a generous amount of a creamy peanut butter frosting? Sort of like a buttercream, this frosting is a bit lighter as it is cut with cream cheese. The texture is not as dense - it is more airy with a mousse-like feeling to it, but the peanut butter adds a bold decadent footprint so you know exactly what it is by just smelling it. I was going to pipe the frosting on, but thought we would just keep it kind of fun and whimsical with a small off-set spatula. However, because of the lighter texture, it didn't spread as nice as I had hoped. While we are quite pleased with the flavor in the frosting, we did think it could be tweaked a bit to achieve a little better texture for spreading.

Chopped peanuts add crunch and another dimension on top of each individual cake - here they are in their little carrier with no place to go... I guess that just means we get them all to ourselves! Woo!

Recipes
King Cupcakes