Reese's Pieces Chocolate Peanut Butter Bundt Cake

I never particularly liked peanut butter until I discovered Reese’s Pieces. The combination of chocolate and peanut butter is amazing and every time I go to the US I bring back a big bag of the peanut butter cups. This time I found a bag of mini cups, which I thought would be perfect to sprinkle over the top of a cake or dessert (or eat by the handful, of course).

 

 I also bought a plastic tub of Reese’s Pieces peanut butter chocolate spread – which is like Nutella but with peanut butter flavour – which is so yummy! You can get it in the UK as well- I found it in Tesco.

 

I decided to make a cake with the chocolate and peanut butter flavours and as a filling might make the cake too rich, there was only one thing for it – a bundt.

 

Here’s the recipe I created

Reese’s Pieces chocolate peanut butter bundt – an original recipe by Caroline Makes

 

200g butter

400g caster sugar

4 eggs

3 tbsp peanut butter

250g self-raising flour

100g cocoa powder

Splash of milk (optional)

To decorate

½ tub of Reese’s Pieces peanut butter chocolate spread (if you can’t get this, you could use regular chocolate spread with peanut butter mixed in)

To decorate: mini Reese’s Pieces (if you can’t get these, you can decorate with chocolate chips)

 

Preheat oven to 180C.

 

Cream the butter and the sugar then add the eggs, mixing well. Stir in the peanut butter until combined.

 

 

Fold in the flour and the cocoa powder. If the mixture looks too thick, add a splash of milk.

 

Grease your bundt tin and spoon in the mixture and level off. Bake in the preheated oven for about 45 minutes, checking with a metal skewer when the cake is done.

 

When baked, allow to cool in the tin then turn out of the tin onto a wire cooling rack. Put kitchen towel or newspaper under the rack to help keep your worktop clean if you like, as the next stage is a bit messy!

 

Spoon half a tub of the Reese's Pieces peanut butter chocolate spread (or nutella etc) to a microwave-proof bowl and heat in the microwave until it is a thick pouring consistency. Pour over the bundt and spread with a knife if needed so the glaze comes down the sides.

 

 

Decorate with mini Reese's Pieces or chocolate chips.

 

I made this for a bake sale at work and it went down very well - I only just managed to get a small slice to try it myself! It was a really good cake but you probably knew that from reading the name alone - if you like peanut butter anyway!

 

I'm sharing this with We Should Cocoa, the blog challenge started by Choclette of Tin & Thyme and run this month by It's Not Easy Being Greedy. The theme is USA and I bought the main ingredients for this cake in America!

I'm also sending this to Formula 1 Foods, the blog challenge I host based on the location of each F1 Grand Prix as this weekend it's in America.

 

Reese's Pieces Chocolate Brownies

Once a month I spend the best part of a day (and evening) at a design agency we use to produce a particular project. We sit with the designers while they make our final changes, tweak the layout and so on – the last time I was there, we didn’t finish until late in the evening so a colleague and I went to grab a burger at Five Guys. This time around I was going prepared- with snacks! It’s always nice to find other people to bake for, as it can get a bit much taking cakes into work too often. But I was out until 10pm the night before on my cake decorating class, and wondered what I could possibly throw together in less than an hour, that would also be easy to pack into Tupperware and take with me the next day. The answer of course is chocolate brownies!

I’ve made enough brownies before that I wanted to do something a bit different this time. I had the idea of Mini Egg Brownies as we are coming up to Easter, but while the supermarket was full of Easter eggs, I couldn’t find a single packet of Mini Eggs. Perhaps I will make those a bit nearer to Easter! So I got home with the main ingredients for the brownies but nothing extra to add in, and cast my eye around the house – it fell upon a jar of Reece’s Pieces mini  peanut butter cups, nestling behind the Kitchenaid (out of sight otherwise I’m sure I would have eaten them by now!). I knew that would work and debated just throwing them into a basic brownie recipe but then decided to see if Hershey’s – the maker of Reese’s – had a recipe on their website. And they had plenty, some of which I have bookmarked to come back to!

I used this recipe but changed it a bit – I didn’t add the extra layer of peanut butter on top, as I thought it might be a bit much (I didn’t know if many people at the design agency were peanut butter fans – my boyfriend for instance doesn’t really like it) and rather than using the miniature peanut butter cups and sprinkling them throughout the mixture, I used whole ones pressed down in the tin in rows. I think with all those changes I can call this

Reese's Pieces Chocolate Brownies - an original recipe by Caroline Makes...

You need:

1/2 cup butter or margarine

2 cups caster sugar

2/3 cup cocoa powder

4 eggs

3/4 cup self-raising flour

approx. 16-20 Reese's Pieces peanut butter cups

Preheat oven to 180C. Grease and line a square brownie tin.

Melt the butter in a small pan over the low heat; add the sugar and cocoa powder and stir gently until the sugar has dissolved and you have a thick chocolate mixture. Remove from the heat.

Transfer to a bowl and beat in the eggs then fold in the flour.

Pour the mixture into the prepared tin. Unwrap the Reese's Pieces peanut butter cups and gently press down into the mixture in rows.

Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes then allow to cool.

Use the position of the Reese's Pieces to show where to cut into squares. You can see they have roughly held their shape and you can definitely spot them inside the brownies.

These tasted very good - the peanut butter gave a salty yet sweet contrast to the rest of the brownie. These went down very well with the agency!

I'm sharing these with We Should Cocoa, as the theme this month is chocolate brownies. The challenge is hosted this month by Katie at Recipe for Perfection on behalf of Choclette at Chocolate Log Blog.