Reese’s Chocolate Cake with Peanut Butter Frosting
Happy Saturday! I hope your weekend is off to a nice start. The weather here is absolutely beautiful. We’ve had some pretty crazy storms here the last couple of weeks but also some beautiful weather in between them. Yesterday is was in the low 80’s!
Life has been extra busy here lately and it had been a couple of weeks since I had had a chance to bake. The girls had started begging for me to make another cake and so earlier this week I decided to make this one for them. Well, actually I was going to make an Easter one, but they asked if I could first make a chocolate one, and then the Easter one – haha! So I made this one first just for them.
I love peanut butter and chocolate and so does my husband. He actually voted this one as his favorite cake to date. It had been a few years since I had made this peanut butter icing and I forgot how much I loved it.
1). I first baked three layers of a yellow cake in 6″ round pans. (And used the extra batter to make cupcakes). I also think this cake would be delicious with a chocolate cake, but my kids have a really strong preference for yellow cake and seeing how this one was made for them I stuck with that.
2). I then used chocolate frosting (recipe below) between each layer as I stacked them and then used that same chocolate frosting to give the cake a crumb coat. I then chilled it in the refrigerator for a bit.
3) After chilling it I added another thicker layer of a lighter chocolate frosting and got it nice and smooth. To frost the cake with the chocolate frosting I used a basic cake spatula and a cake scraper like this one. I also highly recommend getting a cake stand that rotates. I then chilled it a bit more while I made the ganache for the drip.
4). Next I made the ganache for the chocolate drip. (The recipe is below). Once it had cooled I put it into a squeeze bottle and then dripped it on the cake.
5). Once I had finished with the ganache I then made my favorite peanut butter icing. (The recipe is below). I used this 2D tip to add little swirls to the top of the cake.
6). In between each swirl I added a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup..
7). I then transferred the cake from my rotating cake stand to a marble topped one I got years ago at Walmart (I haven’t seen it in a while, but it is similar to this one.) To help transfer the cake I used a cake lifter and my cake scraper.
8). To finish it off, I added some more peanut butter icing to the base of the cake using that same 2D tip and added two more Reeese’s.
Here is the recipe for the frosting used between the layers of the cake (you could probably half this recipe – I probably only used about half of it and then used the rest to frost some cupcakes)
INGREDIENTS:
1 cup (2 sticks) of butter or margarine
1 1/3 cup Hershey’s cocoa powder
6 cups powdered sugar
2/3 cup milk (I actually don’t always end up using all the milk)
2 tsp vanilla extract
DIRECTIONS:
Soften the butter. Stir in cocoa. Alternately add powdered sugar and milk and beat on medium speed. Add more milk if needed (I don’t usually use even close to the amount of milk in the recipe). Stir in Vanilla. Makes about 4 cups of frosting.
To frost the cake with the chocolate frosting I used a basic cake spatula and a cake scraper like this one. I also highly recommend getting a cake stand that rotates.
Then for the outer layer above I used the same recipe as above but halved it and cut the cocoa powder down considerably for a lighter look. I think I only used about 1/3 a cup of it.
And here is the recipe for the chocolate ganache drip
INGREDIENTS:
2 Tbsp unsalted butter
1/4 cup milk (whole or 2% – I used 2%)
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
DIRECTIONS:
I melted the butter and milk in a pan over low heat on the stove. Once the butter was completely melted I turned the heat off and added the chocolate chips. I let them sit for about 4 minutes and then once they were melted I slowly started stirring. It starts out pretty lumpy but will smooth out as you continue to stir. Once it was nice and smooth I then let it sit for ten minutes. After ten minutes I poured it into a squirt bottle and then let it sit another five minutes. Then I dripped it onto my cake. (I’ve used this recipe several times recently and have been really pleased with it. You can see how it nicely dripped on this cake here. This time however, I had to take a phone call while the ganache was cooling and I let it cool for about ten minutes longer than I have in the past and I was not as happy with how it turned out on this cake! Having it the right temperature/consistency is key to having a nice drip!)
And then lastly here is roughly what I used for the peanut butter frosting (I am not the best at measuring but this was pretty close to what I went with and as usual, had a little extra):
INGREDIENTS:
1 cup (2 sticks) of butter or margarine
1 cup creamy peanutbutter
3-4 cups powdered sugar
1-2 Tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
DIRECTIONS:
Soften the butter. Beat the butter and peanut butter together until smooth. Alternately add powdered sugar and milk and beat on medium speed. Add more milk if needed. Stir in Vanilla. Makes about 4 cups of frosting.
To pipe this onto the top and around the bottom I used this 2D tip.
That’s it for today! I hope you all have a lovely weekend!
Warmly, Jenni
