I’ve always loved peanut butter and jelly sandwiches so I decided I’d try making one as a cupcake. There are many recipes out there making different versions of this cupcake, but none were exactly what I wanted. For example, I’d see a cake recipe I liked but didn’t like the frosting that went with it or I didn’t like how the jelly was used in the cupcake, etc.

I knew from the start I wanted to use my favorite jam/jelly I get from IKEA. Made from lingonberries, it’s a perfect blend of sweet and tart. Lingonberries sort of tast like cranberries. This the same preserves IKEA uses in its Swedish meatball meal from their restaurant. For the peanut butter, I used Trader Joe’s natural peanut butter. The recipe I used for the cupcakes from Taste of Home uses the overly processed sweet peanut butter, like Jif or Skippy, but the natural peanut better worked just as well.

When the cupcakes were done baking, they smelled like delicious peanut butter cookies. I put the jam in the middles of the cupcakes once they were done cooling. I used my #1 Wilton frosting tip (one of the large ones) to cut the holes out. Save the little piece of cupcake that you cut out of the center and cut off the top of it. This top will be put back onto the cupcake like a cap on top of the jam filling. To make the jelly or jam easier to spoon, slightly warm it in the microwave for 10-15 seconds. You don’t want it hot, just a little more runny so it will fill the hole nicely. This is especially good for jelly you pull out of the fridge.

The frosting is super easy. This Quick Vanilla Buttercream Frosting from the Food Network is a good one for this recipe. If you want more peanut butter flavor you could use a peanut butter frosting like the one that accompanies the Taste of Home recipe above, but I think the cupcakes have plenty of peanut butter flavor on their own. I was only able to get about 15 cupcakes from the the recipe despite it being labeled as 18 servings. If you pile your frosting on like I did, make the whole recipe from Food network. If you only thinly frost the tops of the cupcakes, you could probably get away with only half a recipe.

Garnish the tops of the cupcake frosting with a little more jelly/jam. You might want to warm it up again for this, as it was much easier to drizzle the jelly when it was more liquid.

This was a very simple recipe to put together. I was happy to find that I already had all of the ingredients for this one in my kitchen which almost never happens! Now you can have PB&Js for lunch and dessert!