Reese's Peanut Butter Cup inspired Cake!

Recently I was asked to create a birthday cake for my father in-law and after thinking about the man at great length, I came up with this idea: A Birthday Cake that looks, tastes and feels like a Reese's Peanutbutter Cup!

Not being a super savvy baker - I started off with some boxed items and tinkered a bit to get personalized and where I wanted it to be.

Basically I took these boxed cake mixes cooking them as directed except in place of the oil I put in a blend of crunchy and creamy peanut butter, I had to add a tiny bit of vegetable oil to make it blend.

I was surprised how well it worked, the cakes came out light, fluffy, with a nice hint of peanut-butter. If I could say anything, I wish it could taste MORE like peanut-butter. But more will be coming into the recipe so just wait. I added the peanut-butter to both the yellow and chocolate cake.

Now for the fun part - while these cakes are cooling - make your chocolate ganache! I thought ganache would be hard to make, but after finding this recipe: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/chocolate-ganache/ (minus the rum cause that would be weird in a Reese's cake) I realized not only is is super easy, its fun and amazingly delicious!

I used the Ghirardelli Semi-Sweet chocolate chips, and heavy whipping cream as directed, if you melt the chocolate first and add the heavy cream to that, it will seize up a bit and take longer to incorporate, so I really recommend following the directions exactly adding the warm cream to the cold chips, works like a champ! And frankly its easier that way anyway! Now I didn't do this, but I might recommend adding a little bit of PB to this mix too, just to really cement home that PB & Chocolate flavor.

Next I made a peanut butter and chocolate chip ganache - same recipe as above, just use the pb/chocolate chip package shown below (or one like it). I also added fresh pb as well, makes it a little softer and spreadable which is nice when icing a cake.

At this point you can do one of two things. You can use the warm ganache as a dippy sauce - its quite possibly the most delicious liquid ever created. Creates a shiny, amazing topping to cupcakes or fruit or whatever.

Just dip it in and let it set (if you cool it, it becomes a sort of hard chocolate shell, or eat it warm, both are tasty!)

Or you can put the bowl of warm ganache to the side, and let it cool a bit, then whip it up and use it as a frosting. 

Slice your chocolate cake in half, and trim the peanut-butter cake so you have a nice flat surface:

Spread on the peanut butter and chocolate ganache generously as you layer:

Then to get it to look more like a Reese's Cup - trim up the sides at an angle. Now I did mention that my baking skills are not spectacular so know that you can do this, and you may even do it better then I did! 

Used the whipped up Semi-Sweet chocolate ganache as frosting and do a nice even coat around the whole thing. Smoothing it out the best you can. keep in mind as its out to the air it will dry, and get harder to work with, so move quickly - also if you put it in the fridge or cool it TOO much it will also firm up quicker then you might like. I had put mine in the fridge in hopes to get it fluffier, but it sort of separated slightly, so just FYI.

And no that isn't some weird naked chick behind the cake, its my sister in a nude colored shirt, didn't even realize she was in the shot til later, and decided it was artistic and fun, so enjoy that. 

The last step is to pipe a bit of decoration around the cake using the peanut-butter and chocolate ganache, to simulate the Reese's look. My piping skills are even worse then my baking skills, but I think it came off looking pretty good!

And there you go! A Reese's Inspired Cake! :D

ENJOY!