A recent office party offered the perfect opportunity to cross another item off of my to-bake list: King Arthur Flour's Fudge-Glazed Creamy Peanut Butter Cake. It's a chocolate cake with peanut butter filling, covered in a dense fudgy icing.
It only takes a couple of minutes to make the cake batter. You dump all of the dry ingredients (sugar, flour, cornstarch, cocoa, baking powder, espresso powder, baking soda, and salt) into a mixing bowl; add eggs, oil, and vanilla; and beat until smooth. Then you gradually add water and keep beating until it's incorporated. You pour the resulting batter into a buttered and parchment-lined 8-inch pan, and bake.
After the cake is cooled, you split it into two layers, and spread a peanut butter filling (peanut butter, powdered sugar, vanilla, and cream) onto one of the layers. You stack on the other layer, and then frost the entire assembled cake with an icing made from bittersweet chocolate melted with a little cream. A garnish of chopped salted peanuts completes the cake.
I made this cake the night before the party and kept it at room temperature under a cake dome. Although the recipe doesn't provide any storage instructions, I wanted to avoid refrigerating the cake. I am paranoid about frosting becoming too hard after being chilled, and this frosting was pretty stiff to begin with -- it consists of six ounces of chocolate thinned with only three ounces of cream. I had to work quickly to even get the cake frosted before the icing set.
I took the cake to work and I don't have a picture of it after it was sliced -- but it was a good looking cake! I used King Arthur Flour Double-Dutch Dark Cocoa, which is half black cocoa. As a result, the cake itself was a gorgeous dark color. The crumb was very fine, and the cake was tender, moist, and deliciously chocolate-y. It was a fantastic chocolate cake. I also really liked the peanut butter filling; even though the cake is called a "creamy peanut butter cake," I used Skippy Super Chunk, and I loved all of the bits of peanut in the filling and in the garnish.
But I didn't love the frosting. It was just too thick and fudgy for my taste. I tend to like fluffy frostings, and I thought the icing was clunky and a bit overpowering. But I just ate around it, and no one else at the party was complaining. This beautiful cake would be a welcome guest at any party!
Recipe: "Fudge-Glazed Creamy Peanut Butter Cake" from King Arthur Flour.
It only takes a couple of minutes to make the cake batter. You dump all of the dry ingredients (sugar, flour, cornstarch, cocoa, baking powder, espresso powder, baking soda, and salt) into a mixing bowl; add eggs, oil, and vanilla; and beat until smooth. Then you gradually add water and keep beating until it's incorporated. You pour the resulting batter into a buttered and parchment-lined 8-inch pan, and bake.
After the cake is cooled, you split it into two layers, and spread a peanut butter filling (peanut butter, powdered sugar, vanilla, and cream) onto one of the layers. You stack on the other layer, and then frost the entire assembled cake with an icing made from bittersweet chocolate melted with a little cream. A garnish of chopped salted peanuts completes the cake.
I took the cake to work and I don't have a picture of it after it was sliced -- but it was a good looking cake! I used King Arthur Flour Double-Dutch Dark Cocoa, which is half black cocoa. As a result, the cake itself was a gorgeous dark color. The crumb was very fine, and the cake was tender, moist, and deliciously chocolate-y. It was a fantastic chocolate cake. I also really liked the peanut butter filling; even though the cake is called a "creamy peanut butter cake," I used Skippy Super Chunk, and I loved all of the bits of peanut in the filling and in the garnish.
But I didn't love the frosting. It was just too thick and fudgy for my taste. I tend to like fluffy frostings, and I thought the icing was clunky and a bit overpowering. But I just ate around it, and no one else at the party was complaining. This beautiful cake would be a welcome guest at any party!
Recipe: "Fudge-Glazed Creamy Peanut Butter Cake" from King Arthur Flour.
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