Happy birthday!

The other day I was having dinner with my boyfriend and 2 of our friends. One of which had a birthday yesterday. We got on the subject of cake and he said he had an idea for a birthday cake he'd like to have. He shared and I got to brainstorming on how to make this cake come to life. I came up with what I thought was a pretty good idea. Little did I know it was going to take me 2 days and a lot of icing. It came out better than I could have imagined. He loved it too! And to pat myself on the back, everyone else was equally impressed!
I think now that I have gotten through it next time won't be so time consuming. Maybe...
I got a good lesson on patience as I mixed my batter and put each cake in the oven to magically puff up in to moist, chocolaty, deliciousness. Four cakes, yes 4, and six cupcakes later I was curled up under my covers sleeping like a log. My cakes were sleeping on the kitchen counter, cooling and preparing themselves for a nice slathering of icing.

This is similar to my chocolate reese cup cupcakes but on a whole other level and, if I may say, ten times better!

Here is what you'll need:

2 - 8 inch cake pans - buttered and floured
2 - 6 inch cake pans - buttered and floured
Muffin pan with cupcake liners. The left over batter makes about 5 - 6 cupcakes.
2 boxes of devil's food cake mix
1 1/2 bag miniature reese cups
1 bag reese pieces candies
1/2 batch chocolate butter cream icing
2 batches peanut butter cream

Make the cakes in separate batches. One box will make the 8 inch cakes. The other box will make the 6 inch cakes and the 6 cupcakes. Once you have the cake batter in the cake pans add some reese cups (whole). Each 8 inch cake will have about 9 reese cups, the 6 inch cakes will have 7. Add 1 reese cup to each cupcake. Bake according to the box directions. Let cool in the pans for about 10 minutes but turn out onto a cooling rack. Let cool completely before icing.

To assemble:
Take each cake one at a time and make them level by slicing off the top, rounded part of the cake. A serrated knife works best in my opinion. Just slice across the top of the cake, almost like if you were slicing a bagel in two.

After you level each cake you can start filling and stacking them. Don't ice the top layer just yet though.

After you get all the layers filled with the peanut butter cream cover the cake with the chocolate butter cream. This is the crumb coat. It's a thin layer of frosting that captures all the crumbs. When you put on the peanut butter cream later you won't have any crumbs in your frosting. And it adds a little extra something for the depth of flavor. 

Once you've applied the crumb coat, stick the whole thing in the fridge. You want the crumb coat to harden a bit so the peanut butter cream is a cinch to put on. 

Moving on! Now that the crumb coat is nicely chilled let's get our icing on! Lots of peanut butter icing is needed. I made extra so I could go the decorating distance. And well they do say presentation is everything...

Cover the whole cake in peanut butter cream. I love my cake turn table for this job. It really comes in handy. Then just decorate it however you want! I used extra frosting and crushed up reese cups and reese pieces. It looked like this:

YUMMY!!!!!! I normally don't eat cake, I don't prefer it as a dessert. But this cake was so moist. 

He was pretty excited! I mean who wouldn't want a giant reese cup cake for their birthday? Crazy people!

So we had to cut right into it. You won't regret these calories!