Reese's Sheet Cake with Chocolate and Peanut Butter Frosting

Making layered cakes can be lots of fun, but they also can be very time consuming and difficult to transport. Our whole family loved this Reese’s Chocolate Peanut Butter Layered Cake I made a few years ago, so I thought I would try to make a quicker and easier version of it and make a Reese’s Sheet Cake. Here is the layered cake (you can read more about and see a video of how we made it in this post):

And here is the easy Reese’s Sheet Cake version:

Here’s how we made the Reese’s Sheet Cake:

1). I first mixed together the cake (our family LOVES homemade frosting and boxed cake mixes – haha!) so the cake itself just about always comes from a mix. I’ve made ones from scratch before but all of us prefer the box mixes so I’ve given up on making them from scratch and have just stuck with mixes the last several years. The girls used to prefer yellow cake but now they prefer chocolate so this is the mix we’ve been using lately and it’s definitely their favorite.

2). Once the cake was mixed I greased this cake pan and poured the batter into it and then cooked it according to the instructions on the box. This is my new favorite cake pan. It’s pretty, it works amazing, and it has a cover so it makes it extra easy to keep the cake fresh and to transport it!

3). Once the cake was cooled I made some homemade chocolate frosting (recipe below) and just spread it across the cake. (This spatula works great for that).

4). Next I cut eight Reese’s peanut butter cups in half to use on the cake. Two king size packs work great for this.

5). Once I had finished cutting the Reese’s cut in half I made my favorite peanut butter icing. (The recipe is below). I then loaded the icing into a piping bag (I use these piping bags. They are large and hold up really well!) and used a 4B tip (I highly recommend ordering this set) to make the little swirls.

7). In between each swirl I placed a half Reese’s cup. I did a terrible job making this perfectly even (I was racing the clock trying to get this made in a tiny window of time), so next time I will focus more on the spacing to make sure it’s even all the way around. But despite it not being very evenly spaced out I think it still looks nice. It doesn’t need to be perfect!

8). To finish it off, I sprinkled some mini chocolate chips around the whole thing and that was it!

CHOCOLATE FROSTING INGREDIENTS:

1/2 cup (1 sticks) butter or margarine

2/3 cup Hershey’s cocoa powder

3 cups powdered sugar

1/3 cup milk (I actually don’t always end up using all the milk)

1 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 2 cups of frosting.

To frost the cake with the chocolate frosting I used a basic cake spatula.

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):

PEANUT BUTTER FROSTING INGREDIENTS:

1/2 cup (1 sticks) of butter or margarine

1/2 to 3/4 cup creamy peanut butter

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 2 cups of frosting.

To pipe this onto the cake I used a 4B tip (I highly recommend ordering this set). And I use these piping bags. They are large and hold up really well!