Peanut Butter and Jelly Up-side-down cupcakes!!!

This latest baking adventure began when I cleaned out my Grandma's fridge. I guess it's my Grandpa's fridge too, but he doesn't really use it. Sure, it holds food that he eats, but of the meals my Grandpa eats at home, my Nana makes 90% of them. The others involve Grandpa either pouring his own shredded wheat, or assembling his own turkey sand which.

So, back to the story. When I cleaned out my Grandma's fridge, I found five jars of peanut butter and 6 jars of jelly. Wow. For two people that I have never in my life, or in the nearly year I have been living with them, eat peanut butter and/or jelly, that's a lot of PB&J. Turns out, Grandpa baits his humane traps for backyard critters with peanut butter. Still not sure how we ended up with that much jelly. But all the better for me!

I decided to make peanut butter and jelly cupcakes. They sounded delicious, and I got to use up some peanut butter and jelly. Now, I successfully emptied 4 mostly empty jelly jars (Smuckers Strawberry Preserves, Smuckers Simply Fruit Strawberry, and some yummy Pomegranate jelly, and some freezer preserves strawberry jelly from a restaurant my parents got them). Unfortunately, there is a lot of peanut butter in one jar. I think between this recipe and the other peanut butter recipe I whipped up, I used almost one jar. But that's ok, because its spring, and those moles and chipmunks will need trappin' again soon!

Now, I was a little nervous when I whipped up this batter. Sure, it was delicious, and a perfect cupcake batter consistency. But, I was concerned it wouldn't hold up the jelly.

Sure enough, when I pulled them out of the oven, they were oozing. When I pulled them out, they all had craters in the bottom! The jelly had sun though!
They look like flat topped jelly volcanoes. Now, I discussed this with my Grandma, and she said "well, they're kind of like pineapple upside-down cake." And thus, a name was born. Peanut Butter and Jelly Upside-down cupcakes. Its a mouthfull, but hot dang, these are delicious cupcakes. REALLY DELICIOUS. Like, hoard them in your basement freezer and take them out when you need a little bit of happy delicious.
Sadly, they also made messy dishes. Good thing I love my Pam.
See, they look so pretty from the top!
Peanut Butter and Jelly Upside-Down Cupcaks
Now, if you're going to make these, I would suggest maybe laying off the milk, or definitely reducing it, to make these more of a muffin consistency so they hold up the jelly. This is a cooks.com recipe, shame on them! Also, the recipe said not to use natural-style peanut butter, or the muffins (they tried pretending these were muffins. HA!) wouldn't rise.

• 1 cup flour
• 3/4 c. whole wheat flour
• 1/4 c. granulated sugar
• 1/4 c. packed brown sugar
• 1 tbs. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 1/4 c. skim milk
• 1/3 c. creamy peanut butter
• 1/4 cup egg substitute (I just used like one egg I think)
• 2 tbs. melted butter
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• PAM!!
• 1/4 c. strawberry jam

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees
2. Mix everything together (except jelly/jam) It says to stir just until moist. Yeah, the wet ingredients in this recipe make a really wet cupcakes consistency batter. I would mix everything except the milk, and then probably add milk slowly until you get a thick, sticky, muffin type batter.
3. Fill pre-greased muffin cups 1/2 full with the batter. Spoon 1 tsp. jam into each cup. Spoon remaining batter on top to cover jam. This recipe makes 12, but as you could see, mine were giant cupcakes. Next time, I'll make more than 12, so they're not so big.
4. Bake at 400 for 20 min or until muffins are light and springy. Cool for 5 min in pan, then cool completely on a wire rack.