Cupcakes for Dad

Dad with a 2 month old Destructor...they're having tummy time!

Today, I baked an impromptu batch of cupcakes for my Dad. Without going into too much detail, he's been in hospital since Monday after an operation and came home today.

Dad is awesome. He's great at a lot of things and is sweet and kind to boot. He tells lame jokes (sometimes over and over), pretends to be cool and likes to wear long ankle socks with shorts (much to mum's chagrin). But most of all, Dad is loving and caring, passionate and protective, and is never short of a kind word of a piece of advice. He'll even forgo his dignity to dance along with Destructor to one of mum's singing and dancing soft toys.

But I digress!

When I was doing my initial planning, I took into account what flavours Dad loves best. Firstly, banana...one of his all-time favourites. Secondly, peanut butter. And finally, chocolate (because we all love chocolate). However, Dad only likes chocolate in block form...he doesn't like chocolate ice-cream or other chocolate flavoured stuff...so, chocolate cake was out of the question.

So, I decided on banana cake with fluffy peanut butter frosting, drizzled with dark chocolate.

Given that these cupcakes were for Dad, I splurged a little and bought a Green's packet mix. They're also REALLY good. They are my second favourite cake mix. Never fail and always delicious. I bought a banana flavoured one.

YUMMMM!!!

 The box says 2/3 cup of milk and 60g of butter, however, I wanted something richer. And, like Julie says in Julie and Julia, butter makes everything better. So, I added a little less milk and 30g more butter. The batter was amazing, so I figured it was an improvement!

While the cakes baked, I started my buttercream. I whipped the living daylights out of about 300g of butter (a good 5-10 minutes of high speed electric mixer) and then added a cup (or thereabouts) of crunchy peanut butter (softened a tad in the microwave). I then added some icing mixture and whipped it all again. After tasting, it needed a little more PB and icing mix, so I adjusted and whipped again. The result - deliciously light and fluffy PB frosting. I could have eaten the whole bowl (had I not known how much butter was in it!)

Not pretty, but soooooo good!

So, on went the PB frosting, and then it was time to drizzle the chocolate. Now, drizzling is NOT my forte. In fact, I suck at it. I melted some chocolate in the microwave and then got a spoon. I tried some practice drizzling over the bowl of melted chocolate and results were not good. They were blobby. I tried on two of the cupcakes and same result. Blobby and very untidy.

Whenever I run into a problem like this, I turn to the internet. There's always a couple of answers, so I usually figure out what I'm doing wrong and then correct it. So, a short google revealed that I was doing it all wrong. I needed to put the chocolate in a plastic bag (I chose a mini zip lock bag) and then pierce one end. Next, squeeze the chocolate out and voilà - the perfect drizzle! So, off I went, however, I accidentally made two holes in the bag (my own fault for using an olive fork...don't ask). Lucky me, this was one of those screw ups that worked in my favour - the two lines of chocolate looked awesome!

Here's the finished product:

Cute AND delicious!

The feedback that I got from Dad was that the peanut butter was too overpowering. However, my cousin said that they were the best peanut butter cupcakes ever...so, the balance wasn't the way that I wanted, BUT, they still tasted great. Success!