Peanut Butter Snickers Cake
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Chocolate cake layered with peanut butter frosting and chopped peanut butter Snickers bars make this peanut butter Snickers cake a decadent dessert!
Peanut Butter Snickers Cake
I’m skipping the small talk today and jumping right into talking about this cake. This is not just any Snickers cake, but a Peanut Butter Snickers Cake. Oh yes, we did!
Peanut Butter Snickers Cake Layers
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Chocolate Cake.
This is our go-to, from-scratch chocolate cake recipe. What makes this the best chocolate cake recipe? Number 1, it calls for buttermilk. Why use buttermilk in a cake recipe? It not only adds some depth to the flavor, but it also breaks down the gluten in the cake batter, which makes it have a soft, moist crumb. Number 2, it calls for strong coffee. Why coffee in chocolate cake? Coffee enhances the flavor of the cocoa powder. Don’t worry. If you don’t like coffee, you won’t taste it in this recipe. It will in fact taste more of chocolate because of the coffee. (Side note…if you’d like more info and pictures on making this homemade chocolate cake, you can find them here. That cake is one of our very first posts!)
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Peanut Butter Frosting.
Melt in your mouth, to die for, peanut butter frosting. Although I go at this frosting with just a spoon and am happy, it makes the best frosting for chocolate cake. If you like chocolate and peanut butter that is. This frosting most likely looks familiar since we use it in cakes, brownies, and cupcakes.
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Peanut Butter Snickers.
If you’ve never had a peanut butter Snickers bar, drop everything and get yourself one. You won’t be disappointed. I chopped up those yummy candy bars and layered them in the middle and on top of the cake. Sweetness overload? You betcha.
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Chocolate Buttercream
. The best chocolate buttercream. I know I’m throwing around a lot of absolutes, but these are seriously our favorites. I wanted to do little dollops of chocolate buttercream on the outside of the cake to give it a finished look. You could skip this step if you’d like, but even if you have no cake decorating skills, you can make these simple stars. All you need is a decorating bag and Wilton Tip 2D or 1M tip.
How to Decorate A Peanut Butter Cake
First, you’ll ice the outside of the cake with peanut butter frosting. As you can see, I got the frosting as smooth as possible, but didn’t fuss about making sure it was perfect. Most of the cake is going to be covered and all eyes will be on those peanut butter Snickers bars!
Then I took a butter knife and made smooth, vertical lines around the outside edge of the cake. Hold the knife vertically and then starting at the base, lightly pull the knife up so that it makes a slightly indented “line” in the frosting. Don’t worry if the top edge has a little extra peanut butter frosting. If you pipe chocolate stars around the outer edge, it will all be covered up.
As you can see, this is a simple way to give your cake a little texture.
Pipe Stars with Wilton Tips
To pipe chocolate stars, simply place Wilton tip 2D in a decorating bag that has the tip cut off. Fill that bag with buttercream, squeeze out the air, and then, holding the bag perpendicular to the cake, squeeze gently to make stars around the top edge of the cake. Do the same along the bottom edge, holding the frosting bag at a 45-degree angle.
Lastly, fill the top of the cake with chopped peanut butter Snickers bars.
And there you have one of the Clark family’s favorite cakes. This shows up at birthdays quite often!
Please don’t email me telling me that this Peanut Butter Snickers Cake is too rich. 🙂 Yes, it is very rich. This is not diet food, friends. We love our rich desserts here. Have just a small slice alongside a glass of milk or cup of coffee and I’m pretty sure you won’t be disappointed.
Tools to Make This Cake
- Stand Mixer: A hand mixer will work, but I always find it easier to make frostings with a stand mixer.
- Beater Blade with Scraper: The best invention ever!
- 9” Round Cake Pan: These are my favorite pans!
- Straight Icing Spatula: The long straight spatula makes it easy to smooth frosting.
- Wire Cooling Racks: This will help your cakes cool more quickly.
- Wilton 1M Tip: For piping pretty swirls on cupcakes.
Peanut Butter Snickers Cake
Chocolate cake layered with peanut butter frosting and chopped peanut butter Snickers bars make this Snickers cake a must for all chocolate peanut butter lovers.
Servings 15
Prep Time 45 minutes
Cook Time 25 minutes
Total Time 1 hour 10 minutes
Ingredients
Chocolate Cake:
- 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 3/4 cups cup sugar
- 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil or canola oil, or melted coconut oil
- 2 large eggs (room temperature)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 cup freshly brewed strong coffee
Peanut Butter Frosting:
- 1 cup butter softened
- 2 cups creamy peanut butter
- 6-8 tbsp heavy cream
- 4 cups powdered sugar
- 1/2 recipe Chocolate Buttercream
- 4 King Size Peanut Butter Snickers Bars chopped
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour 2 round 9-inch cake pans.
- For the cake, put flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a bowl and mix well.
- In a stand mixer, mix the buttermilk, oil, eggs, vanilla together. Slowly add in the mix of dry ingredients while the mixer is on low. Add the coffee and make sure everything is well combined. The batter will be very thin.
- Pour the batter into the prepared pans and bake for about 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
- Turn the cakes out onto a cooling rack. While the cakes are cooling, make your frostings.
Peanut Butter Frosting:
- In a stand mixer with the beater blade attachment, blend together the butter, peanut butter, powdered sugar, and 6 tablespoons heavy cream. While the mixture is beating on low speed, add in additional tablespoons of heavy cream if needed to get a spreadable consistency. Beat the frosting on medium-low speed for 1-2 minutes. This frosting will be thick, but should lighten up a bit after beating.
- Make the Chocolate Buttercream .
- Now it's time to put your cake together!
- Frost the top of the first cake with a thin layer of peanut butter frosting. Put about ½ of the chopped Snickers bars on top of the peanut butter frosting. Then layer the other half of the cake on top. Frost the outside of the cake with the remaining peanut butter frosting, smoothing as much as possible, but it doesn't have to look perfect!
- Spoon the chocolate buttercream into a decorating bag with Wilton tip 2D. Pipe stars on the top outer edge and around the bottom.
- Sprinkle the remaining candy bar pieces on the top of the cake.
- This cake can be made a day in advance. It is OK to leave sitting at room temperature for about a day, but if you are keeping it longer than a day, cover the cake and refrigerate it.
Notes
The calories shown are based on using all of the icing and the cake being cut into 15 pieces, with 1 serving being 1 slice of cake. Since different brands of ingredients have different nutritional information, the calories shown are just an estimate.
Nutrition
Calories: 826kcal | Carbohydrates: 95g | Protein: 13g | Fat: 47g | Saturated Fat: 21g | Cholesterol: 69mg | Sodium: 661mg | Potassium: 448mg | Fiber: 4g | Sugar: 75g | Vitamin A: 555IU | Vitamin C: 0.1mg | Calcium: 79mg | Iron: 2.4mg
Cake Recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction
Hello, I will be trying out this recipe for my hubby’s bday at his request haha cuz it looks super yummy., but I’ve noticed that there is no mention of any caramel. Since snickers has caramel, I was planning on adding homemade caramel sauce on top of the middle section frosting and make wave like (SSSS) motion (sorry don’t know the technical name for it) on the snickers pieces at the top of the cake . Would this amount be enough? ; 1 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup butter, 1/4 cup milk & 1 tsp Vanilla. Also before I do… Read more »
Is there any substitution for the coffee?
I was reading the recipe for how to make the peanut butter frosting and it said 1/2 the chocolate frosting. But when I was reading the instructions it didn’t say to add it. Is it meant to or be added or not??
Is powdered sugar mentioned above icing sugar?
Hi will this recipe be enough for a 9×13 cake or should I double it?
do you put the coffee hot in the cake? I see you’re saying “hot coffee” . My instinct is that it has to cool off after brewing but I also could be wrong.
Hi, I really want to try this recipe as I love snickers! But can you please please please put the ingredients in grams!!! It is a more accurate measuring here in the UK.
I know that I can Google it, but it is not always accurate.
Thanks
Thank you for the lovely recipe, which I’m preparing as I type (well, I’m typing as I wait for the cakes to cool). Question: I didn’t realize the PB frosting recipe would yield so much – wow! I’m pretty sure I will have leftovers. I guess it can be frozen for future use, and then thawed and re-whipped in the stand mixer…what do you think? I also just wanted to mention that for the PB frosting, I used roughly half of the icing sugar called for (I used just over 2 cups) and it was plenty sweet with the lesser… Read more »
Mam can u please tell me what is tha cake tin size u have used for this cake?
I have made this cake twice now. The second time I doubled and made a ten inch 4 layer cake! It weighed 18 pounds :). Spectacular cake, and my friends could not stop raving about it! And NO ONE complained it was too rich!
I live above 6,000 feet and was wondering if you could tell me how to alter the recipe for high altitude?