Buckeye Cupcakes

If you need a really quick way to make a cupcake for a football tailgate, these are the ones. They are not a typical cupcake with just frosting on top. They have a surprise in the middle! We are from Columbus Ohio, so you can see how these are appropriate for football season.

We really enjoyed these cupcakes. They are rich with all of the peanut butter and fudge. I used ice cream fudge topping around the peanut butter ball but I think the next time I will use a ganache or a fudge frosting because it will hold up better inside the cake. The ice cream topping just soaked into the cake....which was not bad either.

Ingredients:
Chocolate cake mix
1 cup of peanut butter
1/4 cup butter
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
Fudge ice cream topping or fudge frosting
Canned chocolate frosting
2 Tbsp peanut butter


Make the cupcakes according to package. Take a small knife and cut a plug out of the top of each cupcake.

Mix 1 cup peanut butter, 1/4 butter and 1 1/2 cups of powder sugar until you get a crumbly mixture. Form into a 1 1/4 inch ball (like the size of a small walnut or a buckeye). Insert a ball into each cupcake. The balls may be larger than the hole you cut, the cake gives as you shove the ball into the center.

If I were going to make a change, here is where I would make it.

To help make these feel more like a buckeye, I added hot fudge on top of the peanut butter ball. In retrospect, I think ganache or fudge frosting would have been better but I was going for quick and easy preparation. Place the plug back on top of the cupcake.

I used 1 1/2 containers of already prepared chocolate fudge frosting to save time. I mixed in about 2 Tbsp of peanut butter. I filled a decorating bag and used a 1M tip to swirl on the icing.

We added colorful jimmies to the top of one for decor and that did not work. It looked a little silly and since we were going after the buckeye feel, we used the crumbly left-over peanut butter filling as a perfect topping.

We cut one open to make sure we did not skimp on the peanut butter filling. I think we did a good job. The amount ended up being perfect and the cupcakes were delicious.

Enjoy!