Reese Peanut Butter Cake

I was reading a baking blog I found online yesterday and came across this amazing cake!! It combines my favorite thing in the world with cake - Reese peanut butter cups!!!! Thank goodness for Valerie wanting me to make her a cake so I could try out the recipe. It took a lot of willpower, but I didn't eat ANY of the cake. I made one 2-layer 6in cake for a birthday cake, and then the remaining batter made about a dozen cupcakes. The only problem with the cupcakes was that they didn't have as many Reese cups in them, and it is probably just the scoop I used didn't pick them up as much. I also changed the frosting and used the frosting on the Hershey's cocoa can instead of a dark chocolate ganache like the recipe called for. As I was making this, I thought about a future frosting and trying to make a ganache out of melted Reese cups...that will be another day another time. :)

Reese Peanut Butter Cake
Recipe came from www.bakerella.blogspot.com

Ingredients:
1 devils food cake mix (or any chocolate cake would probably do)
3 eggs
1 c buttermilk
1/2 c oil
Reese cups (I bought 2 bags)

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350.
2.Mix cake mix, eggs, buttermilk and oil together
3. Chop up Reese cups and then add in about 2 cups (or as many or as little as you want - I think I used 1/2 of a bag for the cake batter and kept the rest for garnishing).


4. Pour batter into cake pans or cupcake pans. Use the box as a guidelines for baking, but I think my 6in cakes took about 30-35 min and the cupcakes needed 15 min.

5. Let cakes cool before frosting.


6. Frost with desired frosting (I even tried a couple with some leftover cream cheese frosting but Val said that was too rich, so maybe stick with chocolate or come up with your own creation)


Hershey's Cocoa Frosting

Ingredients:
1 stick butter or margarine
2/3 c cocoa
1/3 c milk
3 c powdered sugar
1 t vanilla

Directions:
1. Melt butter and stir in cocoa
2. Mix in powdered sugar, alternating with milk. I didn't measure the powdered sugar or the milk - just kept adding until it became a consistency I liked.
3. Stir in vanilla - then frost away!