I thought these gluten free Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cupcakes would be a breeze to make. I was wrong. A dozen batches later, here is the recipe.
Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cupcakes
Ingredients
- ½ cup creamy peanut butter, unsalted
- ½ cup agave nectar or honey
- 2 large eggs
- ¼ teaspoon celtic sea salt
- ¼ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ cup roasted peanuts, chopped, unsalted
- ½ cup chocolate chips
Instructions
- In a large bowl, with a hand blender, mix peanut butter, agave and eggs until creamy
- Blend in salt and baking soda
- Fold in peanuts and chocolate
- Scoop batter one heaping ¼ cup at a time into a paper lined muffin pan
- Bake at 350°F for 20-25 minutes
- Cool for 2 hours
- Top with Vegan Chocolate Frosting
- Serve
Equipment
Just a warning, my cupcakes were a little “sinky,” meaning they kinda collapsed after I took them out of the oven. This is easily remedied by adding more frosting to the top, to disguise the divet. Enjoy!
I seem to be receiving an extraordinary amount of ingredient substitution/recipe modification queries not only on this website, but on my twitter and facebook accounts as well.
I do want to note, that for this recipe (and all of my others) feel free to change any of the ingredients you wish. I cannot, however, project how the recipe will turn out with honey instead of agave, egg substitute instead of eggs, chunky peanut butter instead of smooth, etc. I create hundreds of recipes each year, testing several recipes each day, some of them many times over just to get them exactly right using the very specific ingredients that I use. Unfortunately, I don’t have any way of determining if your substitutions will work when you experiment.
Why is this? I don’t want to lead any of you astray and give advice on something that I haven’t tested myself (and ingredients I haven’t used) as I really don’t think that would be fair to you all. What I can recommend, is taking a look at my forums for advice from others on how they have adapted my recipes.
For now, there is only one of me… so I want to give a major shout out to all of you readers who come onto my site (and Facebook and Twitter) and share substitution results in the comments of this site and in the forums. Thanks a million!!!
Katherine says
I’m wondering why you used a hand mixer here instead of your food processor which you used in every other recipe that I’ve made so far?
I made these last night with my mom. It was so funny because she was so confused and kept asking, “where’s the flour?” I kept explaining and she couldn’t grasp what peanut butter and nut flour actually are!
We made 8 regular sized which filled the cups about halfway but they puffed up to the top and a tiny bit dropped out. Next time I’ll make 9. They didn’t sink much at all. I used whole foods 365 brand peanut butter which was extremely liquidy and the chips sank to the bottom. They are very rich and I can’t finish one without water but they’re very good. I haven’t even frosted them yet and they’re fine with out any. Best part is that they didn’t stick to the muffin liners at all like others I’ve made.
Elana says
Thanks for your comment Katherine! This recipe is an oldie but goodie from 2010. At that time I had not yet discovered that my food processor could be used for just about anything! So glad to hear these were very good :-)
Julie says
I saw a few comments about using something other than peanuts and peanut butter. Other than almonds and almond butter has anyone used anything else like cashew butter and cashews? If so how was the flavor? I really want to make these for family and friends that would prefer “Real” cupcakes.
Julie says
Has anyone tried a substitution for the eggs?
Glyn says
Yum, I just made these for dessert tonight and they are very delicious! I substituted out the agave nectar for 1/4 cup of maple syrup, 2 tbsp melted butter and 1 tbsp xylitol (to cut down on the sugar a little) and I made them in a mini cupcake tin. The recipe yielded 17 mini cupcakes and they rose beautifully – no issues with sinking after cooling. The cupcakes are moist and wonderfully peanutty (I know this because I ate one still steaming from the oven!) and I’m about to serve them with homemade, sugar-free chocolate sauce. Thanks Elana, I’m loving your recipes!
Katy says
My hero! I was wondering about mini ones. Thanks.
Kelly says
Hi, I am just curious if anyone knows what chocolate drops are. I checked out the amazon link Elana posted, but I’m still confused. They look like little chunks of chocolate. Yet the recipe doesn’t say to melt them or chop them. Am I missing something? I would like to use what I have on hand at home. Has anyone use cocoa powder or bakers chocolate to make these? If so, did you melt the bakers chocolate? Or possibly grind it up prior to mixing into the batter. Is it ok to just use cocoa powder?
Thanks!
JJNMama says
You don’t melt them, you just mix them into the batter like chocolate chips. You want them whole in the batter. I used Ghirardelli chocolate chips in mine, soooo good!
Leslie says
I used maple syrup instead of agave. This recipe only made 4 cupcakes however. I followed instructions precisely, no sinking. I did feel the cupcakes were a bit dry. Without the icing they are indeed like a muffin. I am going to try to sub an overripe banana for the sugar, to see if I can get away with no sweetener at all!
Beth in Holland says
good recipe. Filling the cups more than halfway full worked better for me, and the sinky problem was minimal. Hard to believe they turned out somwell without any flour at all.
QueenJellyBean says
Hello my fellow gluten free and celiac friends. Tonight I whipped this recipe (and the suggested chocolate frosting) up in my Vitamix after work. For the cupcakes I subbed almond butter for the peanut butter, and raw chopped hazelnuts for the peanuts. I used big-yellow-bag Nestles morsels for chocolate chips.
Well, these were great. My super picky writer friend took one bite and did the deep-guttoral “rrmmm” noise. That makes you know for sure that these are crowd-pleasingly good. The picky friend always makes snarky remarks about my GF and SF ingredients, but not tonight. Thanks Elana!!!
This is about the tenth Elana recipe I’ve made, and this one is particularly good. Good because these are a pleasure to eat. Good because gluten eating people loved them. It’s a pleasure to be able to share the food I made, and people actually eat it and enjoy it too.
Lauren @ As Good As Gluten says
I adopted you, Elana, for the June Adopt a Gluten Free Blogger event and made this delicious recipe! The cupcakes were delicious!
I substituted honey for agave and omitted the salt because I only had salted roasted peanuts. The cupcakes turned out perfectly!
http://asgoodasgluten.blogspot.com/2011/06/adopt-gluten-free-blogger-elanas-pantry.html
Grace says
Has anyone tried using unsweetened cocoa powder instead of the chips? for this recipe or any of them.
Liz says
I turned these into a bar and LOVE them! It was simply because I was too lazy to deal with individual cupcakes. I also used honey and enjoyed that as well!
Thanks for the recipe, Elana.
Stefanie says
Like in a Pyrex or brownie pan? Interesting … I will have to try this.