Felicity's Chocolate Peanut Heaven Cupcakes

I love nuts (!) so for January's cupcake theme I chose chocolate peanut heaven cakes from my new Cupcakes & Cookies book from Lakeland (thanks Santa!). It doesn't get much nuttier than this...

The cupcake recipe was a rich mixture of butter, eggs, sugar, flour, cocoa, ground almonds and melted dark chocolate. The resulting mixture was quite thick, but not particularly fluffy like the book suggested.

However they rose well and after 25 minutes in the oven they came out smelling delicious. I left them to cool on my makeshift cooling rack (the upside-down draining board!)

For the chocolate ganache topping I heated cream before adding milk chocolate to melt. After refrigerating for 30 minutes I added (almost a whole pot of) peanut butter.

I forwent the dreaded piping bag in favour of a spatula and covered the cakes in the ganache, topping with crushed peanut brittle. There was an excess of ganache so I heaped a small mountain on to each cake...

My baking buddy and special guest taster Leanne rated them a 7.5 - very rich, nutty and definitely best served chilled!