Cups of Heaven

The beau's bday was last week, so I put on my baking shoes and found a yummy-looking recipe. Reese's Cup Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake. Um...yes, please. If you're brave (or a better baker than I), I highly recommend it. It happened to be a lot for me to take on.

I improvised with the kitchen tools I had, created a delicious dough, and baked it into two nice fluffy rounds. Things were looking really good. I even started to get a little cocky, until....

How do I always manage to drop the top layer when I flip the cake!! I cobbled it back together, used the icing as my "duct tape", sprinkled Reese's all over—and my sweet man and friends pretended like it was perfect. I didn't have time to make the suggested icing, so I found a simpler recipe that worked great. Then, I kept it in the fridge until the big reveal, lest the peanut butter melt (the beginnings of which are demonstrated below).

The cake ended up being just a smidge dry, but on the second, third and fourth occasions, we paired it with vanilla ice cream, and it was divine! 

The best part? I only ended up using one of the the two mini Reese's bags that I bought, which meant cups of heaven hanging around my house begging to be eaten. It might as well have been my birthday at that point...

Reese’s Cup Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake
Ingredients:
For the cake:
2 cups all-purpose flour
½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 ½ cups sugar
2 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup buttermilk
4 oz. bittersweet chocolate, melted and cooled (optional)
For decorating:
1 ½ – 2 batches peanut butter frosting
miniature Reese’s cups, halved and/or chopped

Directions:
For the cake, center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350°.  Butter two 9×2” round cake pans, dust the insides with flour, tap out the excess and line the bottoms with rounds of parchment paper.  Place the pans on a baking sheet.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt.  Set aside.

In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter on medium speed until soft and creamy.  Add the sugar and beat for about 2 minutes, until thoroughly blended into the butter.  Add the eggs and yolks one at a time, beating for one minute after each addition and scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.  Beat in the vanilla.  Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the dry ingredients alternately with the buttermilk; add the dry ingredients in 3 additions and the buttermilk in 2 (beginning and ending with the dry ingredients).  Mix each addition only until it is blended into the batter.  Scrape down the bowl and add the melted chocolate, if using, folding it in with a spatula.  Divide the batter between the prepared cake pans.

Bake for 26-30 minutes or until the cakes feel springy to the touch and start to pull away from the sides of the pans.  Transfer to wire racks to cool for about 5 minutes, then run a knife around the sides of the cakes, unmold them and peel off the paper liners.  Invert and cool to room temperature right side up.

To assemble the cake, place one cake layer on a cardboard circle covered in foil.  Spread peanut butter frosting on top of the cake layer.  (If desired, sprinkle with chopped Reese’s cups.)  Place the second cake layer on top of the frosting.  Frost the top and outside of the cake with remaining peanut butter frosting.  Decorate with halved and chopped Reese’s cups as desired.

The frosting was difficult to spread, so I ended up putting in on sort of like I was crafting with putty.