1. I <3 peanut butter... don't you? If the answer is no, consider our friendship terminated (because, in all seriousness, if you're reading this blog and you're not my friend, don't you have anything better to do? Oh wait... you're reading this for real cooking advice... weird.).
2. I am testing these peanut butter mousse recipes from the perspective that they will be stuffed inside a strawberry cupcake. Kind of like PB&J.
3. While I'm writing this CA is trying to tell me what the deal is with the Brewers infield (because I care... a lot).
4. I've had a couple of glasses of wine.
5. One of these recipes is not technically mousse... not that I prescribe to technical food stuff.
For some reason I've never made peanut butter mousse and it freaked me out. It shouldn't have because all three of the recipes I tested came out great. Seriously.... I 
Not Mousse #1 (because it's not really mousse) is made from butter, peanut butter and marshmallow fluff. If you think this could be bad, close your internet browser immediately. It's super easy to make, you just whip the butter an peanut butter together and then add the marshmallow fluff. Easy.Real Mousse #2 is a more traditional mousse with peanut butter, cream cheese, milk, powdered sugar and vanilla which is beat together. Then you whip up some heavy cream and fold that into the peanut butter mixture.
Real Mousse #3 is the same as #2 with a much higher peanut butter to other stuff ratio.I admit that going into this test I was pretty much convinced that #3 was the best recipe. It had the most peanut butter in it which should be really important because you want it to taste like peanut butter. It also had the whipped cream folded into it which I thought would make it nice and light. I really only made #1 because I thought it might hold up better in the fridge if I had to make it ahead of time and I made #2 just to have another one to compare #3 to.
I was totally wrong! #3 was actually my least favorite of the bunch. Because it had so much peanut butter in it, it was far denser than the other two recipes. It really just tasted like sweetened peanut butter which doesn't sound bad (and it actually isn't bad) but when I considered piping it into the middle of a cupcake, it just seemed like it would be thick and super overwhelming. My favorite one was #2, it was light and fluffy, had good peanut butter flavor and I loved the added tang that the cream cheese brought to the mix. It was CA's favorite as well. HOWEVER.... that's not the one we chose to fill the cupcakes with. Why? Well, the cream cheese flavor actually detracted from the peanut butter flavor and while it was the most delicious, it just wasn't right for the overall combination of flavors. #1 is pretty much a perfect for filling a cupcake. It's fluffy and light and tastes like peanut butter with no other distracting flavors. It doesn't even taste like marshmallow. How do I know the combination will be so good???
Because this happened.... that's the 3 strawberry cupcakes from yesterday, 3 peanut butter mousses from today and some strawberry frosting. CA and I tasted these in every possible combination which was really hard work... torture really. But, we found the combination that was just right!
Of course, then I had extra peanut butter mousse leftover and leaving it in my fridge was a really bad idea because I would have been sneaking bites of it every time I walked by. So, I mixed all 3 together with some extra butter and sugar and made peanut butter frosting. I used to top the white cupcakes from a couple of days ago. Then I made CA take them to work. Sometimes I wonder if his coworkers love me or hate me.Here are the recipes for your enjoyment.
Peanut Butter Mousse #1
Peanut Butter Mousse #2
Peanut Butter Mousse #3
Thanks for stopping by... the comparisons continue tomorrow.
Julie
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