New Recipe Review- Oh, Martha!

For my new recipe last week, I decided to try Martha Stewart's Peanut Butter Cupcakes from the cupcake cookbook my sister got me for Christmas. I had leftover chocolate frosting from the cake I made for my mother-in-law's birthday and needed something to do with it. H suggested peanut butter and I was totally on board.

Well, let me say the batter was fantastic! I was so excited, it was perfectly peanut buttery, just sweet enough, and oh-so-fluffy. It took all I had not to shove heaping spoonfuls of it into my mouth before baking them.

Well... it turns out I should have just ate it all without baking them. I had raised my eyebrow when the recipe told me to preheat the oven to 375 and bake them for 22 minutes, when I usually bake cupcakes at 350 for 16-18 minutes. But Martha Stewart knows what she's doing, right?? Wrong, apparently. At around 18 minutes, the sweet smell of delicious baking goodies was replaced with a slight burning smell. I ran to the oven, opened the door, and lo and behold, it was my cupcakes. They all had completely burned- hard as a rock bottoms and all the top edges were burnt to a crisp as well. Poop on a stick :(

I broke the burnt part off the edges and iced them anyway. We were able to eat the top parts off of the hockey puck bottoms, but they still had that slightly burnt taste throughout. Big fat fail. I'll have to try these again and use my normal bake time; they definitely had potential!

Online recipe here. Strangely enough, the online version of the recipe gives you a shorter bake time at a lower temperature, and says it makes 18 (and therefore bigger) cupcakes and not 22 like the book said! Where is the quality control, Martha??

Here is a picture of my sad, burnt cupcakes. The iced versions were too messy to even take a picture of.