Chocolate Reese’s Peanut Butter Cake is a moist chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting and buttercream frosting! Perfect for the Reese’s lover in your life!
We had the idea of this amazing chocolate peanut butter Reese’s Cake a month ago for a friend’s birthday cake. Peanut butter, chocolate, cake, (I couldn’t pass up any of those!). I’m a cake person, and NOT an icing fan. People tell me I’m crazy because of that.
But I have found a couple of icings I really like. This chocolate peanut butter Reese’s cake has all of my favorite stuff in it resulting in my dream cake.
❤️ Why you’ll love this cake:
- 100% homemade
- Fudgy chocolate cake
- Melt in your mouth chocolate and peanut butter frosting
- Like a Reese’s cup, but so much better!
How to Make Chocolate Cake
- You’re going to first put flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt together in a bowl.
- In a stand mixer, mix the buttermilk, oil, eggs and vanilla. Then pour the dry ingredients in the mixer slowly with the wet ingredients. Add in the coffee last and mix well. Trust me on the coffee…it enhances the chocolate flavor. 😋
- Pour the batter into two greased and floured pans. The batter will be thin, but that’s fine!
- Bake for about 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
- Allow the cakes to cool in the pans for 10 minutes. Loosen the edges of the cake with a knife, then turn the cakes out on parchment paper or a wire rack to cool completely before you frost them.
Make the Frostings
While the cakes are cooling whip up the peanut butter frosting and the chocolate frosting. The key with both is to beat the butter first until it is almost white in appearance. Then add the rest of the ingredients. W
e like to use a stand mixer to beat homemade frostings because they end of the lightest and fluffiest that way. If you don’t have a stand mixer, you can use a high powered hand mixer.
Assembling the Cake
- Place one cake layer on a cake plate.
- Spread on the Peanut Butter Frosting on one half.
- Then put the other cake on top.
- Spread that delicious Chocolate Buttercream Frosting all over the top and sides of the cake. If your cake is not even, just make the icing a little thicker in the places it needs to be to make an even-looking cake.
At this point, you could stop. After all, the cake will look and taste delicious as it is!
I like to decorate cakes, so I took this cake one step further. It’s really not as hard as it looks. You can totally do this.
Decorating a Cake with Wilton Tips
- Take a Wilton 2D tip and put it in an icing bag. Fill the bag with icing and squeeze the frosting down to get out the air bubbles.
- You can decorate it any way you want and with any tip you want, but to get the look that I have on this cake, just squeeze until your star is the size you want it and pull away to make a flower. I put flowers all around the top and bottom of the Reese’s cake.
Then cut up Reese’s into small pieces and sprinkle them over the top as desired.
If you are obsessed with Reese’s, you’re going to love our website. You’ll find cookies, brownies, candies and ice cream. We’re always dreaming up new Reese’s creations!
You may also love our peanut butter Snickers cake.
Reese’s Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake
Ingredients
Chocolate Layer Cake:
- 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
- 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 1/2 cup canola oil
- 2 large eggs (room temperature)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 cup freshly brewed strong hot coffee
Peanut Butter Frosting:
- 1/2 cup butter softened
- 1 cup creamy peanut butter
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 3 tablespoon milk or heavy cream
Chocolate Buttercream:
- 1 cup salted butter (room temperature)
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 3 1/2 cups powdered sugar
- 1/2 cup cocoa powder
- 4 tablespoons heavy cream
Reese's Peanut Butter Cups to decorate, optional
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350º Fahrenheit. 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. Use a whisk to whisk the ingredients 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 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 the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together butter and peanut butter for 2 minutes.
- Add 1 cup of powdered sugar and mix until blended.
- Add 2 tablespoons of heavy cream and beat until completely blended.
- Add in the remaining cup of powdered sugar. Beat for 1 minute.
- Test the frosting and if you need another tablespoon or two of heavy cream to make the frosting spreadable, add it in.
Make the Chocolate Buttercream.
- In a stand mixer with the beater blade, beat the butter for 1-2 minutes until it is smooth, creamy and nearly white in appearance.
- Add in the salt and vanilla. Mix until incorporated.
- With the mixer on low speed, slowly add in the powdered sugar and cocoa powder.
- Add the heavy cream, a tablespoon at a time, mixing slowly until it is the consistency that you'd like.
- Beat for 1 minute on medium speed until smooth and creamy.
Assemble the Cake:
- Place one cake layer on a plate.
- Frost the top of the first cake with the Peanut Butter Frosting. Then layer the other half of the cake on top. Frost the outside of the cake with the Chocolate Buttercream Frosting.
- Pipe flowers on top with the leftover Peanut Butter Frosting and/or decorate as desired with chopped Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
- Store in an airtight container at room temperature.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
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.
So easy to make and delicious! The peanut butter frosting was enough to frost the entire cake.
This was THE BEST birthday cake EVER!!!
Love you!
Grandma Clark
This cake looks so delicious! I’m smitten by the looks of it. I’m a peanut butter fan but havent gotten around to baking peanut butter desserts myself yet.
Wow, this cake looks phenomenally delicious! Peanut butter is my favorite (:
WOW! What a beautiful, glorious cake! So glad you used my chocolate cake recipe – it’s truly wonderful. Love peanut butter & chocolate together. This is a must make!
No way. That’s a perfect cake right there. I ADORE peanut butter and chocolate together.
Your cake looks absolutely divine!
I made this last week for my best friends bday and omg, this recipe is amazing. Thank you for making such a spectacular cake. It inspired me to dig our fancy icing bag out of a closet and give it a whirl. It looked beautiful and just thinking about it makes me hungry all over again. I ended up cutting the Reese’s in half and lining them around the edge of the cake and using Reese’s Pieces to give it a little color (a pic is up on my blog if you scroll down to the very bottom of this… Read more »
Thank you!! This is seriously our favorite cake ever! I hope you enjoy it as we do.
This cake is so beautiful and dangerously delicious! I wish you the best of luck getting the hang of food blogging! It takes a while to get into the swing of things, but once you do, it’s easier than eating a piece of this cake. 😉
This cake is just stunning and sounds amazing! Completely drool-worthy!
Is the buttercream frosting using regular cocoa powder or the unsweetened? thank you =)
Wonderful!! I’m glad you loved it! It’s our favorite. 🙂
Lizzy, this is one fabulously over-the-top, big, beautiful cake; it’s outrageously creative and looks irresistible. Just like you, I am also a cake person: layer cakes, cupcakes, birthday cakes, wedding cakes, cheesecakes, potato cakes…but I digress. I love mixing them, baking them, icing them, and most of all…eating them…mostly late at night before bedtime, as I get very sleepy after eating anything sugary sweet for the last several years; IDK why! BTW, I don’t think God created a dog anywhere, who can resist peanut butter. Just the way it is. Besides, watching your pooch working so hard to EAT the… Read more »
Exactly. Us too!
Thank you so much Chandra!
Now I’m craving cake! Peanut butter and chocolate are the best combination!
Thanks!!
Thank you, Jennifer!
You’re right! Make it for her birthday. 🙂 Or mother’s day, whichever comes first!
This sounds so good. Cant wait to try making this, thank for sharing this recipe.
Simon
This sounds really delicious and something new to try. Thank you for sharing this.
Simon
This cake looks fabulous. I plan on making it this weekend for my daughter boyfriend. I have one question to ask. For the chocolate buttrcream icing i see that you have the measurements for the peanutbutter cream icing, but i’m wondering how much cocoa or what kind of chocolate is used for the chocolate butter cream icing?
I love strong coffee, and was excited to add it to a cake. But sadly, I found it made the cake a bit bitter. I used a bundt pan and dropped miniature peanut butter cups in the batter (after it was in the pan). By the time the cake was done baking, the pb cups were near the top of the cake. I frosted the entire cake with the peanut butter frosting. I will make this again, but maybe use a weaker cup of coffee or try just water.
Made this for my moms birthday and it was adored by all even the brother who doesn’t like sweet stuff that much. Thanks so much for the awesome recipe.