Peanut Butter Cup Chocolate Cake

I made this for a co-worker's birthday. She loves peanut butter cups. I found the idea for this on flickr. I followed the recipe for the frosting, but used a different cake recipe. Her picture is great.

Peanut Butter Cup Chocolate Cake adapted from flint knit at flickr

Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Cake from : Hershey's of course!

2 cup sugar
1 3/4 cups flour
3/4 cup cocoa
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup of milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil ( I use canola)
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup of boiling water

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease and flour 2 9 inch round pans.

Mix the sugar through the salt together. Add in the milk through the vanilla and beat with a mixer for 2 minutes. Stir in the boiling water and then pour into the pan. This batter is very thin. Bake for 30-35 minutes. Cool in pans 10 minutes and then on wire racks.

Frosting

1 cup creamy peanut butter
1 cup of butter, softened
 3 tsp vanilla
4 cups of powdered sugar

Beat the butter and peanut butter together until smooth. Add the vanilla and then slowly add the powdered sugar.

I doubled the original recipe for the peanut butter frosting. She had a chocolate ganache in the middle of the layers. I just filled and frosted it with the peanut butter frosting. Frost and decorate with cut up peanut butter cups. Freeze them first or they will become a huge mess!