Day 1 - Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake

For this particular entry, I am cheating a little bit. I didn't get the recipes on here from pinterest, only the inspiration for it. My best friend's boyfriend had a birthday recently and she asked me to make his cake! I said yes (of course). Her only guideline was that it was to be chocolate & peanut butter. The rest was up to me.

My favorite chocolate cake recipe is one that I saw on Ina Garten's show, Barefoot Contessa.


Beatty's Chocolate Cake Recipe
Ingredients
Butter, for greasing the pans
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for pans
2 cups sugar
3/4 cups good cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup buttermilk, shaken
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 extra-large eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup freshly brewed hot coffee

The peanut butter filling was something I made up as I went. 

Peanut Butter Filling

1 stick of butter, softened (NOT melted)

1 8oz package of cream cheese, softened

4 cups powdered sugar

1 1/2 cups peanut butter (smooth or chunky, you decide)

Milk, added as needed to adjust consistency. 

I also use a very basic but delicious chocolate butter cream recipe.

Simple Chocolate Buttercream

1 lb butter, salted

2 lb powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla

3/4 cup cocoa powder, add more to taste

Chocolate Ganache
1 cup heavy cream
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

So it all started with the most important part, the cake. Preheat your oven to 350*F.  The flour, sugar (which technically isn't considered a dry ingredient). baking soda, baking powder, cocoa and salt all get measured into the mixing bowl. 

Next you need to prepare the wet ingredients. I very rarely keep buttermilk on hand. I don't use it enough to buy it regularly. Instead I curdled some whole milk. I use a tablespoon(1/2 oz) of lemon juice for every cup (8 oz). 

Instead of dirtying a thousand different things, I throw it all into one measuring cup, minus the coffee. This is including the eggs.  

You gradually add the wet to the dry. Be sure to constantly be scraping the sides. In the end the batter will be very liquidy and having big clumps of batter will cause your cake to bake unevenly. 

At this point your batter will be relatively thick. It is now time to add the hot coffee. I tend to do this a little at a time and I rarely use the full cup. I generally only use 1/2 to 3/4 of it. Like I said, it WILL be liquidy. 

As per request by my best friend, I added a cup of peanut butter chips. If you are able, try to find minis. They tend to sink straight to the bottom of the pan when they are the normal sized ones. You can also toss them in a little bit of flour to stop this from happening. 

Preparing your pans can be a bit of a pain in the butt. I get absolutely livid when my cakes stick to the pan so I often cut out a circle of parchment paper and then also grease my pan. If you don't have parchment paper, you can spray the pan liberally with non-stick spray or coat it in oil and dust with flour or cocoa powder. Again, I like to use parchment paper and cooking spray because they come out better. 

Finally it is time to bake! This recipe works best for 2  8" circle pans. The layers will be nice and thick. You can also stretch it into 2 9" circles or 2 dozen cupcakes. I baked a 10" circle. Fill the pans 1/2 - 3/4 of the way full.  DON'T overfill your pans. This will result in burning the outside of the cake before the inside bakes. Place the cake pans in the oven for about 25-30 minutes or until the toothpick comes out clean. 

 I had left over batter so I made MINIS!

So while the 1st layer of cake (and minis) were baking, I set to work on making my filling. I started out with 1 8oz package of softened cream cheese and a stick of softened butter. I used salted but unsalted would not make too much of a difference. The peanut butter usually has a lot of salt in it. When the cream cheese and the butter are thoroughly mixed, add the peanut butter. Bring your mixer up to a medium speed until everything is combined. Turn your mixer down to a low speed (stir if available) and gradually add the powdered sugar. The filling will be thick and your mixer might have to work a bit harder. Add milk a tablespoon at a time until it is your desired thickness. 

The chocolate buttercream is fairly simple to do. First, in your mixer you beat the slightly softened butter until it is smooth. Add a teaspoon of vanilla and then start incorporating the powdered sugar and cocoa powder. Be sure to do this slowly. You don't want powdered sugar all over the place. 

When the cakes are baked, turn them out onto another pan and set them someplace to cool. You can then begin unwrapping all of the peanut butter cups. Try not to snack on too many of them. I used almost an entire bag of mini peanut butter cups. 

Set aside half of the peanut butter cups for decorating. The other half can be cut into halves or quarters. When your cakes are cool, you can begin the filling process. I like to make a very firm dam on my cakes so that the filling doesn't seep through the sides. Afterward I piled in the peanut butter filling. 

It is very important to crumb coat your cake. This cake tends to be a bit crumby/crumbly sometimes so be sure to put a nice thick crumb coat on it. I put my cakes in the fridge to firm up for a few minutes while I prepared the ganache. 

Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of this process. I started out by measuring out a cup of heaving cream and putting it into a saucepan to boil. I then measured out 2 cups of semisweet chocolate chips and set them in a mixing bowl. When my cream boiled, I poured it over the bowl of chocolate chips and let it sit for a few minutes. Next I took a whisk and stirred my ganache until it was dark, glossy and smooth. Be sure to whisk out all of the lumps. I set it aside to cool for a few minutes before carefully pouring it over the cake. 

I start in the center of the cake and use an offset spatula to encourage the ganache to the edges. I like the look of it dripping down the side. When the ganache set up a little bit (around 10 minutes), I piped a really quick border around the bottom and added some peanut butter cups (whole, not cut up). 

I added some more whole peanut butter cups on top and piped some leftover peanut butter filling on them. Then I used the leftover, slightly cooled ganache to pipe the lettering. Finally I added the cut up pb cups around the top of the cake for decoration. In the end it came out quite lovely and according to the party guests, the cake was delicious. Everyone should be coming out of their peanut butter & chocolate coma soon. 

Questions? Comments? Use the box below! Please submit recipes if you would like me to try them out for you!

Until next time, remember to indugle in the sweet things in life! 

PCD