Peanut Butter Cup Cake

This recipe is a favorite, and while I've made it "by scratch" before, when I do it's never the same because I end up just altering any homemade chocolate cake recipe.  Because of this, I decided that in order to post it, I'll stick with the original recipe, which is essentially a doctored cake mix recipe but it's delicious just the same.

Peanut Butter Cup Cake

1 Box(18 25oz) cake mix --

(devil's food)

1 pk Instant pudding mix --

Chocolate, 4-serv

1 c Sour cream -- (1/2 pint)

1 c Vegetable oil

4 Eggs

1/2 c Water

30 Mini chocolate peanut butter, crushed

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, with an electric beater, combine all the ingredients except the crushed candies; mix well. Stir in the crushed candies and mix well. Pour into a well-greased 10-inch Bundt pan and bake for 60-65 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool the cake slightly, about 15 minutes. Remove the cake from the pan and continue to cool thoroughly on a wire cooling rack. Yield: 10-12 servings

I usually drizzle on a glaze of some sort, in the picture above I opted for a Peanut Butter Glaze.

Peanut Butter Glaze:
 3-4 tsp water (add until thin enough to drizzle)
2/3 c. powdered sugar
1 Tbsp Creamy Peanut Butter

Stir ingredients together until smooth and drizzle over cake. 

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I normally don't decorate it quite as intricately as I did this one.  This particular cake was baked in honor of my daughter's dedication which happened on a beautiful fall day, hence the fall theme.  The "harvest fruits" were made of marzipan that I had dyed and shaped appropriately, and the autumn leaves were actually made from spreading melted chocolate discs on top of wax paper using a maple leaf stencil and then letting it harden.