Bake It - Reese's Chocolate & Peanut Butter Cake Tutorial

I love this cake. It's good to look at, and it's yummy to eat. 

Last year, one of my boyfriend (Chris)'s work colleagues asked if I would make him a birthday cake. He wanted something chocolatey, with Reese's involved. I did some googling, and found an image similar to this cake. I can't claim credit for the design, it was somebody else's brainchild! I've tried to find who to give credit but the internet. 

So I made this guy his cake, and Chris and my eldest son Alex stared at it with open jaws moaning that they wouldn't get to try any. Alex announced that this was the cake he wanted for his next birthday. 

Guess who's birthday it is tomorrow?

My first baby will be 14! 

I started by making two 6" plain chocolate mud cakes. Once these were cooled I made a small batch of peanut butter frosting to sandwich them together.

Peanut Butter Frosting

50g Trex

100g Peanut Butter

200g Icing Sugar

Approx 2 tbsp milk (as needed)

I spread a small circle of frosting on to my cake board to hold the cake in place like this - 

The first layer of cake goes on, and a good thick layer of peanut butter frosting gets spread across the top of it. Don't get too close to the edges, as we're using a different buttercream for the sides. You can use a spatula, palette knife or the back of a spoon for this, it doesn't need to look pretty. 

Pop the second cake layer on top, taking care to line it up properly so that you don't have a wonky cake. 

Now it's time to make the chocolate buttercream. You can use either milk or plain chocolate for this, depending on your taste. I've used milk as I used plain chocolate in the mud cake. 

Milk Chocolate Buttercream

125g Butter

250g Icing Sugar

100g Milk Chocolate (melted)

1-2tbsp Milk (as needed)

Now you need to coat the cake. Use a palette knife, and try to keep the sides smooth to help with the drizzle later on. I like to start with the sides, fill in around the sandwich gap first to make sure none of the peanut butter frosting gets spread out on to the rest of the cake. Then I cover the top, and neaten all the edges. 

This is where good tools really help. Chris bought me a Wilton cake turntable last year and oh my I do love it! I can hold the blade of the palette knife against the side of the cake and then turn the cake turntable to get a nice smooth finish. It's brilliant when you're piping too, no more having to stop every few seconds to lift and turn a heavy cake.

Now you'll need to put the rest of your buttercream into a piping bag fitted with a 1M large open star nozzle. 

Prep your Reese's cups too. For this size cake, I used 5 cups. 1 whole, and 4 cut in half. 

Start by putting the whole Reese's cup in the centre of the cake, then pipe a high top swirl on top of it.

Next, we need to pipe high top swirls round the outside of the cake, leaving a small gap between each one. I start by doing the 4 compass points. 

To pipe a high top swirl, pipe a small swirl in the centre of where you want your high top swirl to be.

Then, pipe a continuous swirl starting with a circle round this one, working up and inwards on top of your initial small swirl.

After completing high top swirls at the 4 compass points, pipe another 4 halfway in between each of these like this -

Put a half Reese's cup between each swirl around the outside of the cake.

Using the same nozzle, pipe a ring of small peaks around the base of the cake. This both disguises any messy bits at the bottom of the cake and catches the drizzle. Mmm the drizzle. 

Drizzle time! Get the bottle of Hershey's Chocolate Syrup, and try not to pour it in your mouth.

The aim is to squeeze a blob in every gap between Reeses's and buttercream swirl on the top of the cake, so that it drizzles down the side. I also drizzled mine at the centre point of the buttercream swirl for extra drizzly goodness.

Almost done! Crack open a pack of Reese's Pieces and sprinkle them on top around the centre swirl. 

Now you can give it a spritz of shimmer spray, or leave it as it is. 

Enjoy!