Reeses Fast Break Cupcakes!

So, one of my all time favorite candy bars is the amazing Reese's Fast Break. Something about peanut butter, nougat, and chocolate combined is pure amazing. Joel and I both love making cupcakes, and we love coming up with new ideas, and yesterday this one popped into my head. Usually when I have a cupcake idea, I just look it up online and someone has already made something similar. In this case however, I did not find a Fast Break cupcake recipe. Realizing that this idea was fairly original and that it would most likely taste AMAZING, I decided to just make up my own. 

The first step in this experiment was making the cupcake. I kept it simple by just using a chocolate cake mix and following the directions on the box. I also mixed a pack of chocolate pudding mix in with the chocolate cake batter. (I used most of the pudding mix, but not all of it, I left about 2 table spoons worth left in the package.) 

For the nougat part of the cupcakes, I made a quick and easy nougat filling. 

Nougat filling ingredients:

• 1/2 cup of room temperature butter
• 200g of white marshmallows (The bags are usually a little over 200g, so Joel and I just ate a handful of marshmallows and then put the rest of them in the pan!)
• 1 tablespoon of vanilla
• About 2 cups of powdered sugar, or however much it takes to get it to a thick consistency.

Instructions:
1.) Pour the marshmallows into a microwave safe bowl or container. (We used a deep pyrex baking dish). Heat the marshmallows for a minute, and then stir them around. They should be melted, but if not only put them in for 10 second intervals and then stir until they have all been melted together. 

2.)Use an electric mixer or just a hand mixer, and mix the marshmallows and butter. After they are creamed together, add your vanilla and mix it in.

3.) Once everything is mixed in, gradually mix the powdered sugar into the mixture until it reaches a thick consistency. It can still be somewhat runny, putting it in the fridge while the cupcakes are baking will make it thicker.

Note*: For our first trial, we tried to dollop the nougat filling on top of the batter placed in the cupcake tin, and it ended up just melting and disintegrating into the cupcake...it didn't taste bad, but the nougat I was craving was not present, at all. It almost was like it disappeared. The solution that we came up with for this was that we put the nougat in the fridge so that it would set, and then once the cupcakes were done we put a generous layer of nougat on top of them, and then topped that with the peanut butter frosting. It had the desired effect, although both of us agree that an even better approach might be to hollow out the cupcakes and then inject the nougat in the middle. (We do not have the tools to do that so we made do with slathering it on top!)

After the nougat came the peanut butter frosting, which is a very simple and delicious recipe!

Peanut butter frosting ingredients:
1/2 cup of softened butter
1 cup of peanut butter
2 cups of powdered sugar
3 tablespoons of milk

Instructions:
1.) Mix the butter and peanut butter together with an electric or hand mixer.
2.) Add small amounts of powdered sugar to the mixture and mix it in well, do this until all of the sugar is used.
3.) Whenever the mixture starts getting thick add 1 tablespoon of milk. 
4.)If you mix the frosting for 3-4 minutes it should be fluffy, (If you don't do it for exactly that long it will still turn out delicious, haha I am impatient and i didn't mix it for that long!)

Make the cupcakes, add the nougat either on top or on the inside if you want to get fancy, and then ice it with the peanut butter frosting, and you have a baked version of the greatest candy bar ever! Enjoy! 

 - love,
Maddy