Peanut Butter Frosting

I needed to send Logan to daycare with a gluten-free cupcake a couple of weeks back, as they were celebrating our daycare provider's son's birthday.  What better excuse than to make ourselves some cupcakes???  

I cheated and made one of the Betty Crocker gluten-free cake mixes that is new to Canada.  I am definitely not the "make a cake from a box" type.  But I'm cutting what corners I can these days, and this is one of them.  I didn't want to be wasting my time testing gf cakes that ended up not working.  And, as it turns out, these were actually pretty good.

I whipped up some of this delicious frosting to go on top of them.  I've made this with both peanut butter and sunbutter.  And since I'm a bit of a pb-aholic, I have to say that I preferred the peanut butter version.  But the sunbutter ones weren't too shabby either ;)

1 C creamy peanut butter
1/2 C margarine
2 C powdered sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla
3 tbsp. milk

Whisk or blend together all ingredients until smooth and creamy, adding more or less milk to achieve the desired consistency.  

This is super quick to make.  I whipped it up, dug out a bit of the cupcake with an apple corer,

and stuffed it full of this frosting.

Then I just piped some on top.  For instructions on how to pipe the icing, check out my lemon cupcakes here.

Difficulty level:  easy to make the icing, moderate to pipe it

For a dairy-free/vegan version, use Earth balance instead of the margarine and coconut or almond milk for milk.

For a nut-free version, use soy butter or sunbutter instead of the peanut butter.