Saying goodbye – The Peanut Butter Cup All-In-One Cake

Last Friday as a few of us Buy.com’ers said farewell to Mili, a very special Marketing Intern who after spending a short summer with us, will be returning to finish her senior year at Duke University.

Typically our farewells are held at the local brewery, however since Mili isn’t of drinking age we went out for lunch instead.

The restaurant everyone agreed upon was Opah, and although I’ve driven by it every almost weekday for the past seven years, this was my very first time eating there.

A few minutes after being seated we were greeted with a couple of these…

Then thanks to Melissa we all shared this incredible tower of sweet potato chips dusted with aged parmesan and served with a side of chipotle ranch dressing.

The sweet potato fries alone were worth the visit!

Those of us who knew what we would be having for dessert later that afternoon opted for a light lunch. (Everyone everyone except Mili).

During lunch we talked about the different places we’ve all lived, weather in the south, how everyone was going to miss Mili, and interestingly we also learned how some people are really passionate about all things Beet.

One of the funniest moments during lunch was when the tallest of the group was served these two tiny sliders, it was comical!

I ordered the sugarcane tenderloins, a trio of tenderloins are skewered into thin sugarcane batons and served over their mango vegetable slaw, delish!

Later that afternoon at approximately 3:00 PM we asked Mili to join us in the lunch room for dessert.

The cake I made for Mili was a slightly adapted version of Sprinkle Bakes’ Peanut Butter Cup Chocolate Cake. I decided to call mine the All-In-One, because you have layers of chocolate cake, peanut butter cup cheesecake, caramel, you name it… it’s in there!

I also replaced one of the layers of caramel with a chocolate caramel by swapping our regular caramels for Riesen (a chocolate covered caramel). And because I was pressed for time, instead of making the chocolate curls I used up the remaining peanut butter frosting and studded the cake with mini peanut butter cup quarters.

Ironically, I started making this cake Tuesday evening, the same day I read this post on Jennifer Perillo’s blog. As you can imagine, in the spirit of #apieformikey this cake was made with lots of love and shared with an amazing group of people.

Is this an insane cake or what?

Needless to say it was a huge hit!

This afternoon the tables were turned when Mili stopped by my cube for one last farewell and dropped off the sweetest thank you card and these two little chocolate bunt cakes.

Thank you so much Mili!

Have a great year at Duke and stay in touch!

Tagged as: Caramel, cheesecake, Chocolate, chocolate cake, peanut butter frosting, peanuts, Reese's peanut butter cups