Death by Peanut Butter

I don't have anything to blog about right now.

So until something substantial comes along, here is a picture of the birthday cake I made for Jericho. Feel free to just look at it, or continue reading for the recipe.

Jericho's food sin is any peanut butter/chocolate combination. I will typically buy him a big bag of Reese's Peanut Butter cups for a present, but this time, I made a cake- I shall call it a Chocolate Peanut Butter Peanut Butter Chocolate cake. Even if you don't use the cake and frosting for an ice cream cake, they were both very yummy. The frosting was some of the best frosting I think I've ever had. And I'm picky about frosting.

Chocolate Cake
2 cups cake flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 cup dutch-process unsweetened cocoa powder (the higher quality the better)
1 cup granulated or turbinado sugar
1 cup light brown sugar
3 large eggs, room temp
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temp
1 cup strong brew coffee (I didn't use the coffee and it turned out fine)
1 cup sour cream
1 tsp pure vanilla extract

4 oz finely chopped dark chocolate (60-70%) (I also omitted this step b/c I was already adding a 1lb bag of Reese's cups to the rest of the cake)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease 2 9-inch cake pans.

In a large bowl (use electric beaters) or Kitchen Aid stand mixer, place the butter and sugars. Beat on high until creamed. Add the eggs, beating until smooth. Mix in the sour cream, vanilla and coffee, beating on medium until well blended. Add the dry ingredients slowly, continuing to mix until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Fold in the chopped chocolate.

Evenly divide the batter in the prepared pans. Bake for 22-25 minutes, until spring to the touch. Remove from oven and allow cakes to rest in pan for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to completely cool.

Peanut Butter Mousse Frosting
1 cup creamy peanut butter
5 tbsp unsalted butter, room temp
1 tsp pure vanilla extract

1/3 cup heavy whipping cream

1 to 1 1/2 cups confectioners sugar

Place the butter and peanut butter in a bowl. Whip with electric beaters on low until mixed. Add the remaining ingredients, beating on high speed for 2-3 minutes until light and very fluffy.

The other layers

Ice cream- Sweet Cream from Coldstone with chopped up Reese's cups. Chop up and add them yourself and it's much cheaper than asking them to do it.

Fudge- 1 jar of Smucker's chocolate fudge with chopped up Reese's cups. (This cake is much easier when you have an electric chopper.)

For those of you that have never made an ice cream cake before, it's pretty simple. The order that I choose to do things is as follows:

1) Make the cake (preferably two  8" or 9" pans)

2) Let the cakes cool, wrap like crazy in plastic wrap and freeze overnight

3) Take desired amount of ice cream (1 layer= about 1 - 1.5 qt). Line one of the round cake pans with plastic wrap and spread out the ice cream in the pan.* It's much more solid to do it this way than to spread it out on the cake. Freeze overnight.

4) After everything is good and frozen, assemble. In this case, I prepared the fudge layer and frosting the same day as assembly. They spread easier when they are room temperature.

5) Once assembled, put back in the freezer for at least another hour for everything to get all frozen and set.

*The problem with this method is that the ice cream layer ends up being wider than the cake layer. You can either trim it down to size (and eat the scrapings) or use 9" pans for the cake and 8" pan for the ice cream.