Remember my friend Adam of recent WeddSplosion fame?  Saturday was his 25th birthday (old geezer) and guess what he got?  A CAKE.   Gawd, he’s a double-dipper.

But I didn’t make him just any cake – I made him a DELICIOUS cake (if I do say so myself).  I’ve been baking so much non-chocolate stuff recently it felt really good to get back to my comfort zone and bake something that I know I’d personally like.

 

Apologies for the really terrible pictures in this post…I unfortunately didn’t have the time or fancier camera with me to take quality pics.  I’m sorry!

For me if I’m baking things that aren’t chocolate, I’m never sure if I’ll personally like them.  That means that I’m less confident when I offer them to other people because I can’t say “oh I LOVE this flavor.”  Not because it’s necessarily bad, but because if it’s not chocolate, it’s simply not my favorite.  So when Emily told me Adam’s a total chocolate person, I breathed a small sigh of relief.  Finally, something I can relate to!

If anyone’s been paying attention recently, one of my favorite baking blogs is by Sweetapolita, who taught me how to make my new favorite frosting, the swiss meringue buttercream.  She’s one of those incredibly talented bakers who can not only bake up a delicious-looking cake, but decorate it beautifully.  It’s from her blog that I snagged a delicious-looking chocolate cake recipe that she uses for multiple cakes on her site.

 

A quick discussion with Emily let me know that as long as there was chocolate and no coffee, I probably couldn’t screw up the cake flavors.  She specifically mentioned peanut butter, though, so I got to work putting together both chocolate and peanut butter fillings to go inside the cake.

It’s tough to see from above, but between the four layers the bottom and top fillings are peanut butter and the middle is chocolate.  I had planned originally on making all three layers peanut butter, but I actually ran out of butter (mon dieu! O.o), so was limited in how much peanut butter buttercream I could make.

So I made two 8 inch cakes and sliced each in half for four layers.  I went with a lighter chocolate swiss meringue buttercream (62% Scharffen Berger) since I felt like the 99% I used on the Mocha Marble cake simply overtook all the other flavors; I wanted to peanut butter to be distinguishable.  The peanut butter buttercream was a simple combo of butter, peanut butter and some powdered sugar.  It actually didn’t turn out exactly how I’d imagined (on its own, anyway), but it did taste like peanut butter.

I wish I’d taken pictures of the cake on fire with 25 candles, but I got too excited (and concerned for the melting frosting!).  So here’s a picture of the cake after the candles had been taken out instead. 😀

 

Final verdict?

Wow, this cake was unexpectedly delicious!

I don’t mean to say that I expected it to taste terrible, but rather I didn’t expect it to taste as good as it did!  Really, it turned out exactly as I’d intended.

The cake was soft and moist, the chocolate SMB rich but not overpowering.  And the peanut butter buttercream (which I had been concerned about, since I felt like I didn’t make enough) added just the right amount of peanut buttery goodness to it.  I loved it.  And so did a lot of other people at the party (at least, I didn’t hear anyone say they hated it.  Not that it’s likely anyone would have said that to my face >.>).  Anyway, I was really happy with it and, most importantly, so was Adam.

So happy birthday Adam!  Your other birthday present is that I didn’t post a picture of you with a finger in your nose.  You’re welcome!

 

Double Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake

Chocolate Cake from Sweetapolita.

• I used 2 x 8.5 inch pans.  Don’t ask.

Swiss Meringue Buttercream from Whisk Kid.

• I added ~75 grams of melted 62% Scharffen Berger chocolate.

Peanut Butter Buttercream (you may want to increase this, possibly double)

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
• 2 tbsp smooth peanut butter
• 1/2 cup powdered (confectioner’s) sugar

Instructions:

• Beat the room-temperature butter until fluffy with the peanut butter.
• Beat in the sugar until thoroughly mixed and fluffy.

Assembly:

1. Cut each cake layer in half (yielding 4 layers total).
2. On the first layer of cake, spread half of the peanut butter buttercream.  Add the 2nd layer of cake on top.
3. On the 2nd layer of cake, spread ~1 cup of chocolate SMB.  Add the 3rd layer of cake on top.
4. On the 3rd layer of cake, spread the rest of the peanut butter buttercream.  Add the final layer of cake on top.
5. Spread the rest of the chocolate SMB onto the cake.  You should have enough to frost the whole thing!