Peanut Butter Cake

    I feel like many people are often scared and intimidated by the idea of making a layer cake. However, growing up, my mom always made us whatever cake we wanted for our birthdays. I specifically remember one year when my sister wanted a super tall animal cake so my mom delivered. Each layer of the cake was a different color and it was so tall she had to put dowels in it to hold it up. She frosted it with either white frosting or marshmallow fluff and then covered it with rainbow sprinkles and animal crackers. It was so amazing and it was every kid's dream cake. Of course because I grew up with cakes like that I also grew up with the confidence I could bake literally everything.

    I am not sure if the amount of unearned confidence was smart or not but either way when my mother in law asked me if I wanted to make a birthday cake for a birthday party for my husband, his sister, and his cousin, I said yes. Then, because I can't make anything easy for myself, I decided that I didn't want to make a simple flavor. I wanted to make a four layer peanut butter chocolate cake entirely from scratch. There was one problem, the week leading up to this was almost entirely booked and I could only work on this cake in my spare time. 

    Thankfully, most of the tiktok videos I watched said you are supposed to chill the layers before you decorate. So I first made the chocolate layers, then wrapped in saran wrap and put them in the freezer, the next night I made the peanut butter layers then put in the freezer, then the third night (the day before the party) I made the buttercream and decorated the whole thing.

     I made the chocolate cake by first mixing all of the dry ingredients and setting them aside. As I was mixing the dry I heated up some water I then mixed the wet ingredients and slowly added in the the hot water. Once the wet was mixed I incorporated the dry until there were no lumps. I seperated the mixture into two nine inch cake pans that I had prepared earlier I then baked at 350 for about 26 minutes.

    As I was researching recipes I also discovered my new favorite way of preparing cake pans. What I would do is spray the whole pan with cooking spray. Next, I traced the bottom of the pan on parchment paper. I cut out the circle in the parchment and placed it in the bottom of the cake pan. Because of the cooking spray the parchment paper it sticks to the pawn pretty well so it won't shift when I pour the batter in. I then lightly sprayed the parchment s that it wouldn't stick to the cake. This method worked like a charm and I didn't have to trim the cake at all in order to make it even when I stacked it.

    The peanut butter cake was a curious recipe but I decided to try it anyway because I had enough ingredients in case it failed. I first preheated the oven and prepared my two nine inch cake pans. in my stand up mixer I creamed together my butter, peanut butter, and sugars. I paused a few times to scrape the edges of the bowl so that it would be more evenly mixed. I then mixed in the sour cream and vanilla. Once that was well mixed I added the eggs one at a time. Once that was done I combined the milk and water in a small bowl and all of the dry ingredients in another bowl. I then added half of the dry to the wet mixture and mixed. Before I added the rest of the dry I put the milk and water mixture in the bowl. To finish I mixed in the rest of the dry until just barely combined and I put the batter in the two pans I prepared before. I then baked for about 22 minutes and let cool.

    The night before the party I made the peanut butter buttercream by creaming together a ton of peanut butter and butter and slowly adding in the powdered sugar until it was the consistency I wanted. As I was preparing the buttercream I took the cakes out of the freezer so they could thaw. I was honestly nervous that the cakes would be frozen in the middle but they never even froze all of the way through. Something about the cake withstood freezing extremely well, making it so that the cakes didn't even dry out!

    I topped the cake with a chocolate ganache that I made by melting chocolate and mixing in heavy whipping cream on the stove. It was too thin when I put it on the cake so instead of a nice drip it ended up making uneven vertical stripes. The cake ended up being delicious and we had almost half leftover even though we had about 3 families there working on it. I think next time I need to buy eight inch cake pans instead of nine or I could even do 2-3 layers instead of four. Comment your favorite cake flavor and maybe I'll make it and post the recipe! The recipes I used are linked below.

https://www.lifeloveandsugar.com/loaded-peanut-butter-layer-cake/

https://stephaniessweets.com/chocolate-peanut-butter-cake/