Snickers Cupcakes – Chocolate Cupcakes filled with caramel sauce and topped with smooth peanut buttercream, more caramel, crunchy peanuts and a little slice of Snickers.
The idea for this recipe came to me recently when I created my peanut buttercream. It really reminded me of a Snickers bar, so I decided to bring together the other Snickers flavours, chocolate and caramel, and turn them into one delicious cupcake.
It’s really just an amalgamation of three of my existing recipes (chocolate cupcakes, caramel sauce and peanut buttercream) and I hope it shows how easy it is to take a few simple recipes (believe me this chocolate cake is one of the easiest you’ll ever make) and turn them into something creative (and very delicious 🙂 ).
I’ve shared all three recipes below to save you having to flick between lots of posts, but if you’ve not made them before you might want to pop over and look at the full post as there’s lots of extra tips (especially for the caramel sauce).
Here’s a couple of bonus tips just for these cupcakes…
- To remove the centre of the cupcakes neatly, use the large end of a piping nozzle. Press it into the top of the cupcake and lift, the middle should come out in a perfect circle (which you can then eat as a snack while you finish the cupcakes – a perk of being the cook 🙂 ).
- To slice the Snickers neatly for the top, pop them into the fridge for an hour or two to harden. Don’t be tempted to try freezing them as they go too hard and shatter when you try and cut them rather than slicing neatly (I’ve learnt that one from experience).
Fancy getting creative?
Take a look at some of my other creative cupcakes (as well as all my basic recipes so you can mix and match and create your own).
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Snickers Cupcakes
INGREDIENTS
For the chocolate cupcakes
- 150 g self-raising flour
- 30 g cocoa powder
- 175 g caster sugar
- 175 g soft margarine - or softened butter
- 3 large eggs
- ⅛ tsp vanilla extract
- 75 g milk chocolate - see note 1
- ½ tbsp milk
- 12 cupcake cases
For the caramel sauce (you can use 100ml of ready-made caramel sauce if you prefer)
- 100 g granulated sugar
- 30 g butter
- 60 ml single cream - or 30ml double cream and 30ml full fat milk
- For the peanut buttercream
- 250 g unsalted butter - soft at room temperature
- 250 g icing sugar
- 250 g smooth peanut butter
To decorate
- 2 tbsp peanuts
- 2 Snickers bars - pop these into the fridge for an hour or two before you want to use them.
INSTRUCTIONS
Make the chocolate cupcakes
- Pre-heat your oven to 160ºC/140ºC fan.
- Put your cupcake cases into a muffin tin.
- Grate the milk chocolate (75g).
- Put all of the ingredients into a large bowl (150g self-raising flour, 30g cocoa powder, 175g caster sugar, 3 large eggs, 175g soft margarine, ⅛ tsp vanilla extract, ½ tbsp milk and the grated chocolate) mix on a low speed until fully combined.
- Divide the mixture evenly between the 12 cupcake cases (I use a cupcake scoop to help split it evenly).
- Put the tin into the oven and cook the cupcakes for 20-25 minutes. After 20 minutes put a skewer in the middle and check if it comes out clean. If it does they’re done, if not pop them back in for a couple more minutes and check again.
- Once cooked, remove the cupcakes from the oven and leave them to cool in the tins for a few minutes.
- Remove the cupcakes from their tin and pop them onto a wire rack to cool completely.
While the cupcakes and cooking make the caramel sauce
- Measure out all of your ingredients into separate bowls (100g granulated sugar, 30g butter, 60ml single cream). Cut the butter into small cubes (this’ll help you to incorporate it into the sauce quickly).
- Put the sugar into a large saucepan spread evenly across the bottom and place onto a medium heat.
- Once the sugar has clearly started to melt, gently move the sugar about the pan with the spatula until it has all melted.
- Once the sugar has melted continue to stir gently with the spatula until it has turned a light brown colour.
- As soon as the caramel is light brown, carefully add the butter and whisk rapidly until the butter has melted and is combined.
- Turn off the heat and add the cream, again whisking rapidly until combined.
- If there are any small sugar crystals, pass the sauce through a metal sieve to remove them.
- Put into a bowl or jug and refrigerate to cool.
Make the peanut buttercream (see note 2)
- Put the butter (250g) and peanut butter (250g) into a large bowl and beat (by hand or using an electric mixer on a slow speed) until fully combined and soft.
- Add the icing sugar (250g) a tablespoon at a time and beat on a low speed until fully combined.
- Your buttercream is now ready to serve. If you find it’s become a little soft then simply pop it into the fridge until it has firmed up a little.
Put the cupcakes together
- Once the cupcakes have cooled, scoop out the centre using a teaspoon or the large end of a large metal piping nozzle - To use the nozzle, simply push down then lift up and the centre of the cupcake should just lift out.
- Add a spoonful of the caramel sauce to the centre of each cupcake.
- Pipe in the peanut buttercream (or simply spread it on if you don't like piping).
- Drizzle over a little more caramel sauce - You can either do this by dipping a fork in the sauce and drizzling it over, or putting it into a piping bag with a small hole at the bottom.
- Roughly chop the peanuts and sprinkle them onto the cupcakes.
- Using a sharp knife, slice each chilled Snickers bar into 6 pieces and put a slice on top of each cake.
- Enjoy.
NOTES
Any nutritional information provided is the estimated nutritional information per serving. Please refer to my guide to Charlotte’s Lively Kitchen nutritional information if you would like to learn more about how this is calculated.
If you’ve not made my caramel sauce here’s a quick video…
Free-From/Suitable For…
- Suitable for Vegetarians
- Corn-Free
The ingredients for this recipe are easily available free from all these allergens. However, please ensure you double-check allergen information for all ingredients.
Natalie says
Hi Charlotte,
First off these cupcakes were super chocolatey and moist. I tend to taste each element of a recipe as I go so if there are any tweaks needed or something goes wrong I know where. I found personally that the cupcake mix was too sweet for me. Is there any way to reduce the sugar slightly? Baking is an exact science and if i randomly starting reducing sugar, I’m worried it will affect the bake or the ratio of the other ingredients. Any help or advice would be much appreciated.
Natalie x
Charlotte Oates says
I have not tested a reduced sugar version of this recipe – I find the balance of sweet to be about right. If you wanted to try changing the proportion of ingredients then perhaps you could try with a smaller batch. But as you appear to already know, adjusting one ingredient can affect other aspects of the bake. So testing is really the best option here for you to make it to your preferred taste.
Karen Forrester says
Hi
I am going to be making a 3 layer 20cm cake, will this amount of buttercream be enough to fill and pipe on the top?
Thanks
Charlotte Oates says
I think you’d struggle to fill and cover a cake of that size with this amount buttercream. It depends on the piping style you’re going to use and how thick you’d like your icing to be, but I’d probably add an extra 50%.
Linda Drake says
Oh that looks delicious, I am definitely going to have a go, thank you xx
Suzanne says
When you take out the centre of the cake (for the caramel filling) do you just go half way down? Does that make sense?
Charlotte Oates says
Half way
Suzzanne says
Hi, I’m wanting to use this buttercream to cover a 20cm cake. Is the consistency ok for this? Thanks 🙂 x
Charlotte Oates says
Yes, it should be absolutely fine.
Choclette says
Oh peanut buttercream! I’ve gone week at the knees. I haven’t made any in far too long. Your cupcakes look beautiful as always and I’m more than tempted to tuck into one of them. Who am I kidding? I don’t think I’d be able to stop at one.
Thanks for sharing with We Should Cocoa.
Kate - gluten free alchemist says
These are my idea of heaven. I love Snickers. I love cupcakes. What’s not to love? May just have to de-gluten these and try them! x
Charlotte Oates says
They should be pretty straightforward to de-gluten, I hope you enjoy them when you do x
Helen says
I love peanuts & peanut butter & all things peanut & these look amazing!
Charlotte Oates says
Me too, you obviously have great taste! 🙂
Janet Leighs says
Hi Charlotte
I am holding a MacMillan coffee morning where I am baking a coffee cake and your coffee butter icing it really worked out well. I am not the best cake maker around but I do try my best – do you have any easy cake bakes I can use for this as I need a hand.
Many thanks
Janet
Charlotte Oates says
You can adapt the recipe for my Coffee Cupcakes to make a full cake. The recipe will make an 18cm round cake with 2 layers, it’ll take about 30-35 minutes to cook in the oven. If you’d like a larger cake then for a 20cm cake increase the ingredients by 1/3.
Kat (The Baking Explorer) says
I’m in love! They sound absolutely scrumptious, I would devour a few of them far too easily! Thanks for linking up to #TreatPetite
Charlotte Oates says
They are pretty yummy! Sadly I had to eat lots of them after I’d made a big batch for the pictures 🙂
Angela / Only Crumbs Remain says
These sound so so yummy Charlotte, and surprisingly easy too. Love the fact that you added extra chocolate to the cupcakes besides the usual cocoa powder!
Angela x
PS, if you’re still joining in with linkies you’d be more than welcome to add them to my #BakingCrumbs linky x
Charlotte Oates says
Thanks Angela. I find that chocolate cake doesn’t taste chocolatey enough for me unless I add lots of grated chocolate to the mix too. I didn’t have baking crumbs on my list, I’ll get it added. Are there any special rules?
Angela / Only Crumbs Remain says
I’m definitely going to be adding some grated chocolate into my next chocolate cake batter rather than just cocoa powder – who doesn’t love a nice chocolatey cake! I can imagine it making it much more moist than the drying effect of cocoa.
I only started #BakingCrumbs last month so it’s pretty new still, I’m running it as a monthly linky and as for the rules, well they’re quite standard really. Any new bake (sweet or savoury – cake, pie, cupcakes, meringue, traybake etc) is welcome. Whilst GBBO is on our screens I’m inviting people to add upto 3 bakes, but ordinarily it’ll be 2. Once linked up with the ‘badge’ displayed in their post, I just ask that people do a bit of commenting/sharing to make it more of a community of baking fanatics! In return I comment, tweet, stumble & yum the recipe as well as compiling a full round up at the start of the next month. To highlight my ‘favourite’ (which can you can imagine is a difficult decision given all the fab bakes in the blogging world!) I’m baking one of the entries each month! Hope to see you there Charlotte 🙂
Angela x
Angela x
Charlotte Oates says
One of the hardest things I found when I ran a linky was choosing the things to feature the next month. It doesn’t get any easier 🙂
vikki says
Oh Charlotte my fave chocolate treat is Snickers. I actually hide them from the children. It is one treat I won’t share. I love reading your work. You are an inspiration to me and I am still working my way through your blog reports. Thankyou.
Charlotte Oates says
Aww thanks Vicki. I’m a big fan of Snickers too, I’m thinking of making a cheesecake version soon as well 🙂