These Snickers Cupcakes transform plain chocolate cupcakes into decadent, candy-bar inspired creations, featuring a peanut caramel filling, fluffy peanut butter frosting, and LOTS of chocolate and candy bars.
I have never understood the gourmet cupcake craze. Don’t get me wrong—I understand the appeal of cupcakes themselves. Bite-sized cakes, with a 50/50 frosting ratio, adorably petite, so cute they’re practically batting Disney princess eyes at you, and socially acceptable to eat as an afternoon snack? That I get.
What I don’t get is paying upwards of $6.50 for said cupcake, and waiting in crazy long lines for them, and fetishizing the shops that sell them. It’s just some cake in a cute paper wrapper. Maybe with a scattering of sprinkles or a fondant doodad on top. Let’s all calm down now.
So here’s whatcha do. Instead of spending $50 on a dozen fancy-shmancy cupcakes, take those two twenties and go to the store. Buy a bag of miniature Snickers, and some caramels, and some peanuts if you don’t already have them. Take the remaining money, and buy yourself some slippers and a pair of loose sweatpants, or maybe a Slanket. You are going to want to get verrrrry comfortable when you enjoy these Snickers cupcakes.
These beauties start with a moist, rich chocolate cupcake. Use the best cocoa you can find, please, because a cupcake made with pale, tasteless cocoa is no kind of cupcake at all. The cakes are hollowed out and filled with a peanut-studded caramel, then they’re topped with peanut-marshmallow frosting that mimics the peanut nougat found in a Snickers bar.
Are we finished, you ask? Not remotely! Top them with a big drizzle of hot fudge sauce, a scattering of salted peanuts, and a chunk of a Snickers bar. Oh, you fancy thing. Resist the urge to sell them to your friends and coworkers for $6.50 apiece and instead bask in the knowledge that you created an edible masterpiece. Snuggle into your Slanket in triumph.
These beauties will win over even the most skeptical cupcake doubters. If you’re a lover of candy bars, and a lover of excess, and a lover of cupcakes the size of your face, you are going to be a lover of this recipe.
Recipe notes: If the store-bought caramels you’re using are very stiff, you might want to increase the amount of cream to 1/2 cup to make sure that the filling is nice and soft. No one wants to chomp on a big hunk of hard caramel in their cupcake! The pretty cupcake wrappers I used are called tulip cups and can be purchased on Amazon.
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Cookie Dough Frosting
Snickers Cupcakes
Ingredients
For the Cupcakes:
- 7.8 oz all-purpose flour, (1 ¾ cups)
- 3 oz unsweetened cocoa powder, (1 cup)
- 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 cup buttermilk, full-fat, at room temperature
- 1/2 cup sour cream, full-fat, at room temperature
- 2 tbsp water, can substitute brewed coffee for richer flavor
- 6 oz unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 4.75 oz granulated sugar, (2/3 cup)
- 5 oz brown sugar, (2/3 cup)
- 2 large eggs, at room temperature
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract
For the Caramel-Peanut Filling:
- 14 oz soft caramels
- 1/3 cup heavy cream
- 1 tbsp unsalted butter
- 1/2 cup salted peanuts, coarsely chopped
For the Peanut-Marshmallow Frosting:
- 8 oz unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 12 oz creamy peanut butter, (1 ¼ cups)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/4 cup heavy cream
- 1 lb powdered sugar, (4 cups)
- 7 oz marshmallow cream, (1 jar)
To Finish:
- 1/2 cup chocolate fudge sauce
- 1/4 cup salted peanuts, chopped
- 10 fun-size Snickers bars, cut in half or coarsely chopped
Instructions
To Make the Cupcakes:
- Preheat the oven to 350 F. Line 20 cupcake cavities with paper liners.
- In a bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt. In a separate bowl or large mixing cup, whisk together the buttermilk, sour cream, and water (or coffee).
- In the bowl of a large stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat together the butter and sugars until they’re light and fluffy, about 3-5 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition, then add the vanilla extract.
- With the mixer running on low speed, add a quarter of the dry ingredients. When it’s mostly mixed in, add a third of the liquid ingredients. Continue to alternate adding drys and liquids, ending with the dry ingredients. When the drys are almost all mixed in and only a few streaks of flour remain, stop the mixer and finish mixing by hand with a spatula. Scrape down the bottom and sides of the bowl.
- Scoop the batter into the lined cupcake pans. Bake in the preheated oven for 22-25 minutes, until the tops of the cupcakes spring back when lightly pressed. Cool completely.
To Make the Filling:
- Don’t make the filling until you’re ready to fill the cupcakes. Combine the caramels, cream, and butter in a microwave-safe bowl. Microwave in 30-second increments, stirring well after every 30 seconds. They may resist melting and coming together at first, but continue to stir and heat until you have a smooth, fluid mixture. Add the chopped peanuts and stir them in.
To Make the Frosting:
- Combine the butter and peanut butter in the bowl of a large stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, and beat on medium-high speed until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla, cream, and powdered sugar, and mix on low speed until the sugar is moistened. Raise the speed to medium, and continue to beat until the mixture lightens and becomes fluffy and smooth. Add the marshmallow cream and stir it in by hand using a rubber spatula, scraping the bottom and sides of the bowl well. Once the frosting is well-mixed, spoon it into a pastry bag fitted with a large star tip.
Assembly:
- Use a sharp paring knife to cut a cone-shaped hole out of the top of the cupcakes. Scoop the caramel-peanut filling into the hole, coming almost all the way to the top. Cut the bottom off of the cupcake cone, and replace the top of the cupcake on top of the caramel. (The cupcake filling can be eaten or thrown away—I trust you will find something to do with it.) If the caramel starts to get a little hard to work with, microwave it briefly until it is fluid again.
- Once all of the cupcakes are filled, pipe the frosting on top in one big decorative swirl. Add a drizzle of fudge sauce or chocolate ganache, a sprinkling of chopped peanuts, and half of a fun-sized Snickers bar on top. Store Snickers Cupcakes in an airtight container at room temperature, and enjoy within 3-4 days.
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Measuring Tips
Our recipes are developed using weight measurements, and we highly recommend using a kitchen scale for baking whenever possible. However, if you prefer to use cups, volume measurements are provided as well. PLEASE NOTE: the adage “8 oz = 1 cup” is NOT true when speaking about weight, so don’t be concerned if the measurements don’t fit this formula.
Want to learn more about baking measurements and conversion?
So I cheated and used cake mix for the cupcake part. These turned out amazing. Everyone loves them! Thanks!!!
Awesome, so glad to hear it! No shame in using a cake mix! 🙂
These Snickers Cupcakes looks so good. I want to make them for bake-off Contest that we have at work.but I have one question, cause I don’t want to mess them up. What kind of cream is it in the frosting, it says 1/4 cup cream? thank you
Hi Kim, Anything labeled “heavy cream” or “whipping cream” will work. (Actually, even milk might work, but I haven’t tried it so I can’t say for sure.) Good luck in the bake-off–if you win come back and let me know!
Thank you…..And YAY me I did get 1st place in the contest at work. We only win bragging rights for the year. Also I wanted to let you know that I used the same filling and covered it with white and Choc Choc, it was delicious. Thank you again for the great recipe.
That is awesome, congratulations!! Bragging rights are a great prize! 🙂 So glad you loved it!
So looking at the amount of ingredients and how many it says it makes, how many standard 2 inch cupcakes would it make or is the 14 based on that size cupcake?
Hi Andrew,
The yield is pretty much the same. These look giant because of the tall liners and the gobs of frosting, but they’re baked in normal cupcake pans, and I used the same scoop I use for my regular cupcakes. You might be able to stretch it to 16, but I’d say 14-16 is what you’ll get.
Hello. I have a quick question and sorry if it has already been posted. What size pan did you use for these? I made these recently and mine look so small compared to yours. I added a little extra mix to the pans but they shrunk just a little after cooling. I’m not sure if maybe I over mixed or over cooked. Thank you 🙂
BTW They are very good and have a great chocolate flavor. I love it!
Hi Matt, I used a regular sized muffin pan for them, but I think the combination of the tall cupcake liners and the big swirl of frosting on top makes them look bigger than they actually are! How many cupcakes did you get out of the batch? I got 14 cupcakes out of it–if you got significantly more, then you were probably using less batter than I was. Sorry about the disappointing size, but I’m glad you liked the flavor!
I made an attempt at these last week and for some reason my frosting was MUCH too thick to pipe. It was also more in line with the colour of peanut butter than yours look. Any thoughts as to how it turned out like this? The only thing I can think that it might be is the cream I used in the frosting. I used Double Cream (UK) and I’m wondering if maybe a thinner cream might be needed for the consistency.
Either that or i’ve made a grave error in technique somewhere along the way!
Hi Liz,
I think the cream was definitely the problem! Marshmallow cream is actually not very close to “real” cream at all–it’s a light, fluffy, sweet product that is sort of loosely related to marshmallows. So substituting double cream would give you a very different result! I used marshmallow cream because I wanted to mimic the fluffy texture of peanut butter nougat in a Snickers. I imagine it might be a hard product for you to find, so if you can’t track it down then substituting a different peanut butter frosting recipe is probably your best bet. Good luck!
P.S. There is a very similar product called Marshmallow Fluff that can also work in this recipe–just letting you know in case you come across it in your search. 🙂
I actually did use Marshmallow Fluff in the frosting. Sorry, by cream I meant the 1/4 cup cream that the frosting recipe called for in addition to the 7oz jar of Marshmallow Fluff. So I used the full jar of sticky Marshmallow Fluff and a 1/4 cup of double cream (which i guess might be heavy cream in the states? It’s generally used to whip to stiff peaks but can be left liquidy in recipes too).
I was wondering if it was the 1/4 cup of double cream that might have been too thick, as it is far thicker than say, milk or something. Do you think this could have been the issue?
Of course–I was being dumb. Sorry about that! Now that I actually understand, I’m not sure the cream is the problem. I haven’t tried it with double cream but it works just fine with heavy cream (which is what I usually use) and which is a pretty decent double cream substitute. What kind of peanut butter did you use? Natural peanut butter is not going to work as well as the kinds with the unhealthy palm oils. 🙂 And is it possible it wasn’t beaten long enough to get light and fluffy?
Where can one find store brought caramel? I looked in Walmart and all I could find was the little jars of butterscotch caramel…maybe I was over looking it?
Hi Ty, I usually find it in the baking aisle, near the chocolate chips and packaged nuts. You may also have luck looking in the candy section. You’re looking for the small individually wrapped caramel squares, like the type from Brach’s or Kraft.
This looks sooooooo delicious! I grew fat juist by gawking at them!
Haha, thanks very much!
Oh god, these are real master pieces! they look amazing! I’m so going to make them for my snickers addict boyfriend this year
Awesome! Let me know what you think if you give them a try!
I made these cupcakes a few weeks ago and everyone loved them (my dad’s coworker didn’t believe they weren’t professionally made). I really liked the frosting and would like to adapt it for other flavors of cupcakes. Can I just leave the peanut butter out, or does it need to be replaced with something else? Thanks!
Sara, that’s great to hear! So glad that the cupcakes worked well for you! The peanut butter’s a pretty big component of the frosting, so you shouldn’t omit it without tweaking some of the other elements. It sounds like a marshmallow cream frosting might be what you’d like, which has butter, powdered sugar, and marshmallow cream, in different ratios than in this recipe. Here’s one example:
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/marshmallow-buttercream-frosting/
Hi! Thanks so much for sharing this wonderful recipe. I made them for my husband’s 30th birthday and they were a huge hit! They are so rich – I only took a couple bites of one and that was enough for me.
The filling is wonderful and so is the frosting – I absolutely love peanut butter.
I will certainly make them again for a special occasion. I also found them to not be so time consuming as others mentioned – just a couple extra steps from a regular batch of cupcakes.
Hi Chaia, I’m so glad to hear that you guys enjoyed the cupcakes–thanks for letting me know! And happy birthday to your husband! 🙂