Tag: creamy peanut butter

Categories
Dessert

Reese’s cake nearly got the ‘butter’ of me this time

With a boxed cake mix and only a few frosting ingredients, this cake boasts the flavors of a Reese's candy bar.
With a boxed cake mix and only a few frosting ingredients, this cake boasts the flavors of a Reese’s candy bar.

There are so many neat videos online that give an insider’s view of all kinds of professions.

For some reason, I can get absolutely lost watching someone power wash a driveway, paint fingernails or frost cakes and cookies.

And then I have it in my head that I could also easily accomplish any of these seemingly mundane tasks—especially if it deals with the kitchen.

I think that’s why I got especially frustrated this past weekend when I could not, for the life of me, properly frost the chocolate cake I was planning on taking for a family lunch. The thick peanut butter frosting only wanted to stick to my knife, my hands or itself, but it was completely immune to sticking to my soft cake.

It was one of those moments where Joey came in the kitchen, asked how things were going, and then slowly backed away and out of the room after seeing the frustration on my face.

So, the bad news is that I didn’t make a beautiful, video-worthy cake this week. It was definitely not winning any beauty contests. The good news, though, is it tasted pretty darn good, and despite being tough to frost, it actually came together really quickly.

The recipe I used came from the blog “Oh, Bite It!” You can find the original post at https://www.ohbiteit.com/2014/03/inside-out-reeses-peanut-butter-cake.html. I didn’t adjust any of the ingredients, because this was incredibly easy, but I will give you some ideas on how to better frost this cake in my version below.

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Reese’s Cake

With a boxed cake mix and only a few frosting ingredients, this cake boasts the flavors of a Reese's candy bar.
Course Dessert
Keyword cake mix, chocolate cake, creamy peanut butter, easy dessert, layered cake, peanut butter, powdered sugar, Reese’s

Ingredients

  • 1 chocolate cake mix and ingredients from package
  • 2 cups creamy peanut butter
  • 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
  • 1/8 teaspoon salt

Instructions

  • Prepare your cake mix in two eight-inch, round cake pans, according to the package directions. Set them aside to cool.
  • In a glass mixing bowl, beat the peanut butter, powdered sugar and salt until it is fluffy and well combined.
  • Pop the bowl into the microwave for a few seconds (start with 20) to thin the frosting out a bit before frosting your cake.
  • Place one of your cakes onto a plate and slather a thin layer of frosting on top. Top with the other cake and cover the whole layer cake to your liking with the rest of the frosting. If it’s still difficult to work with, microwave it just a bit more. Just be careful not to make it so runny that you have the opposite problem to thick frosting.
  • Serve your cake immediately or store in an airtight container.

This really was tasty. I used a devil’s food mix, but I also could have easily just used my from-scratch chocolate dump cake recipe that I love, if I wanted to.

At our family dinner, my four-year-old niece informed me that she only wanted to eat the frosting. Considering the amount of candy I watched her eat that afternoon, I don’t think leaving the cake on her plate was a bad decision.

But I must admit I was a little grumpy as I watched her scrape all of my hard-fought icing off of the cake. “If only she knew what I went through to get that on there,” I thought.

But then I remembered she’s four. You don’t get much sympathy from a four year old.

This piece first appeared in print on April 28, 2022.

Spice Up Your Life is a weekly newspaper column written by Lindsey Young in south central Kansas. If you are interested in sponsoring this column, please contact us through the “Contact Lindsey” link at the top of the page.

Categories
Dessert Snack

The Sweet Granada’s avalanche bark truly rocks

Avalanche bark has a great texture, with crunchy rice cereal, fluffy marshmallows and chocolate chunks, along with the flavor of peanut butter.
Avalanche bark has a great texture, with crunchy rice cereal, fluffy marshmallows and chocolate chunks, along with the flavor of peanut butter.

I used to love field trips as a kid—visiting the Wichita Art Museum, the Kansas Cosmosphere, the zoo, the Kansas State Fair, etc.

It was always an adventure in a new place, and I’m the type of person who enjoys learning something new whenever possible.

As an adult, you don’t seem to get to do field trips as often, so when Joey told me we were going to go to Emporia to visit his new friend Kim, owner of The Sweet Granada: A Chocolate Cafe, he didn’t have to do any convincing for me to jump in the car.

Joey recently met Kim through a small business group, and she invited us to come hang out for a bit and see her operation.

Guys.

There. Was. Chocolate. Everywhere.

It was amazing.

When you walk in, you’re hit with a smell wall of deliciousness, and you immediately want to empty your entire bank account into their till when you see the display cases full of every kind of chocolate-y treat you can imagine. I was, almost quite literally, a kid in a candy shop.

We had a great visit with Kim, got a full tour of their operation, and she even sent me home with a recipe to share with all of you for a treat they make at the shop.

This stuff is not only easy to make but delicious, too. It’s a perfect treat for the upcoming holiday snack table. The only alterations I made was to pare this recipe down, since Kim is used to making everything in bulk.

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Avalanche Bark

Avalanche bark has a great texture, with crunchy rice cereal, fluffy marshmallows and chocolate chunks, along with the flavor of peanut butter.
Course Dessert
Keyword chocolate, crisp rice cereal, marshmallows, no bake, peanut butter, Sweet Granada

Ingredients

  • 22 ounces white chocolate or vanilla almond bark
  • 1 1/2 cups plus 3 tablespoons creamy peanut butter
  • 1/2 cup mini marshmallows
  • 1/4 rounded cup crisp rice cereal
  • 1/2 cup chocolate chunks I used bittersweet

Instructions

  • Prepare a nine-by-13-inch baking dish by lining it with parchment paper.
  • In a microwave-safe bowl, melt the almond bark, heating 30 seconds at a time and stirring in between, until it is all melted. Stir in the peanut butter.
  • Once everything is smooth, stir in the marshmallows, cereal and chocolate chunks.
  • Spread the mixture evenly into the prepared pan. Sprinkle with a few more toppings, if desired.
  • Let the mixture cool completely on the counter or in the refrigerator and then cut into squares. Store in an airtight container.

This stuff was great. It was rich and had a fantastic texture. I had to immediately give away as much of the batch as possible to keep from eating the entire pan myself.

Plus, I had other goodies from The Sweet Granada that I needed to spend my calories on. (I highly recommend the dark chocolate pretzel caramel bar. That was my favorite.)

If you’re ever in Emporia, I highly recommend your own field trip to The Sweet Granada at 803 Commercial St. And if you can’t make it over there, get online and do your sweets shopping that way—they ship! You can find them at https://sweetgranada.com/. Locally made treats are a great gift for those hard-to-buy-for folks, or you can just let a group of experts make your holiday treats for you and save yourself some time and energy this year.

I love getting the chance to see how different small businesses do their thing around our state, and it was so fun to meet Kim and see her adorable shop and taste her delicious goodies.

That will definitely not be my last visit to The Sweet Granada. Joey just better watch out, because next time, it won’t be a field trip—it’ll be a shopping trip.

This piece first appeared in print on Nov. 4, 2021.

Spice Up Your Life is a weekly newspaper column written by Lindsey Young in south central Kansas. If you are interested in sponsoring this column, please contact us through the “Contact Lindsey” link at the top of the page.

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