Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes

These Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes are so moist, decadent, and have the perfect balance of flavors!

If you love cupcakes like we do, don't miss our full collection for favorite cupcake recipes! Today's Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes are sure to find a place at the top of your list.

Rich chocolate cupcakes are filled and swirled with creamy peanut butter buttercream. It is the perfect combination.

How to Make Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes

This versatile scratch chocolate cupcake recipe works for layer cakes also and is one of our favorites! In fact, we've used this recipe for our Mocha Cupcakes as well!

You can find the full, printable recipe card further down in this post. Here is a quick rundown of our steps!

• First, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Add cupcake liners to a cupcake pan. (This recipe makes 36 cupcakes).

• In a separate bowl, add the all purpose flour, sifted cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Whisk to blend and set aside.

• In the bowl of your electric mixer, mix the softened butter on medium speed until light and creamy. (Use paddle attachment if using a stand mixer). Add the vegetable oil and vanilla. Gradually add the sugar and mix until light and fluffy, approximately 4 to 5 minutes.

• Next, add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each egg until the yellow of the yolk is blended. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl as needed.

• Mixing on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and milk to the sugar mixture, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. (3 additions of dry ingredients and 2 additions of milk). Mix just until blended.

• Slowly add the cup of hot coffee at this time and mix to blend. The batter will be very thin. Don't worry this is how it should be. This recipe makes about 8.5-9 cups of batter for 30 or so cupcakes.

• Line the cupcake pan with cupcake liners. Scoop about ¼ cup batter into each cupcake liner. Bake at 350℉ for 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick can be inserted and removed with no crumbs or just a few crumbs attached (or when the centers spring back when lightly touched).

• Pop the cupcakes out of the pan soon after removing from oven. (We do this within just a few minutes of removing).

Peanut Butter Buttercream

We used a creamy, delicious peanut butter buttercream for our filling and frosting! This amazing recipe has been our go-to for peanut butter frosting for years.

It is so easy to make- a simple combination of softened butter, creamy peanut butter, confectioners sugar, a splash of milk, and a bit of vanilla extract.

How to Add Filling to Cupcakes

Filling the cupcakes is an optional step, but we love this peanut butter frosting so much that we wanted to add just a little bit more to each cupcake!

If you are new to adding filling to cupcakes, it is so simple!

First, fill a disposable piping bag with peanut butter frosting and snip the tip away, creating a smallish hole.

Insert the filled piping bag halfway into the top of your cooled cupcake and squeeze the bag for a few seconds.

Helpful Tip: If you have a spare cupcake, you can to a test run for the filling to get a feel for how much frosting you are putting into each cupcake. Split it in half, and see how much filling is inside.

If you'd like more filling, just squeeze the bag a second longer next time. (You can also do a quick trial run on a plate. As you squeeze the piping bag, count how many seconds it takes to get the desired amount of filling).

Frosting and Decorating

We added simple swirls of peanut butter frosting to our filled, cooled chocolate cupcakes using a large 1M star piping tip.

Holding the piping bag vertically over your cupcake, start in the center and spiral outward to cover top of the cupcake.

We love an easy cupcake topper! Today, we used Reese's Thins, sliced in quarters.

Look how pretty! These are sure to make any special occasion even better ;0)

Recipe FAQs

More Cakes with Peanut Butter

Keep these other recipes in mind for the peanut butter lovers in your life! They are sure to please. You can find the full listing of our favorite recipes in our Cakes and Cupcakes Section!

Some of our most popular are Peanut Butter Cupcakes from Cake Mix, Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Pound Cake, a delicious Peanut Butter Chocolate Marble Cake from cake mix, and an easy Peanut Butter Cake from a mix.

Thanks so much for stopping by. We hope that you enjoy the recipe! Don't miss our full collection of Cake Recipes which includes cake recipes from scratch as well as cake mix recipes!

If you are interested in cake decorating, we have hundreds of cake tutorials to share with you! You'll learn everything from how to frost a cake, elegant cake designs, birthday cake ideas, and so many more!