For the holidays this year, I made a peanut butter cake. Finding or creating a good peanut butter cake recipe is hard! After Thanksgiving, I decided I wanted to make cakes and a lot of them. I first started with a red velvet cake, chocolate chip cookie cake, and now this peanut butter cake. Why am I making all of these cakes? Why not?
In New Jersey, my “thing” was going to diners. I don’t know if my “thing” is baking cakes in California, but I’ll keep doing it for now. With recipe blogging, I’ve quickly learned that you need to write a story for SEO for your recipes to be seen. The readers don’t care about why you are making the cake; they just want a recipe. BUT if you found this recipe, it’s probably because my random story about peanut butter cake was enough text to get me ranked in google results. So it’s a catch 22 of a random extra story of why I have made a peanut butter cake that you probably won’t read. Like my college papers that needed word counts, it’s just filler so enjoy.
So here we go. Why did I make this cake?
I was hosting my brother and his fiance at our house. I’ve never really hosted anyone. My brother and his fiance are great cooks. They make fancy things all of the time while my spouse and I are plain janes and eat the same 5 things each week.
My spouse will pretty much eat anything I make. He won’t tell me, “it’s awful,” even if it is. If I gave him a $5 sheet cake, it would be fine. If I gave him a jar of peanut butter, it would also be fine.
While hosting my brother, I realized I should have a dessert. I don’t know why I didn’t just make something I had already made. Or even just bought something. Instead, I felt inspired to try something new, go into the unknown, and make a peanut butter cake. (Heck, I forgot to ask if she liked peanut butter or was allergic…luckily, she wasn’t). Ultimately, it all worked out, and everyone liked and said the peanut butter cake was good.
So if you are a super novice baker like me or want to try baking a peanut butter cake, this is a good option. I suggest making sure no one is allergic to peanuts first.
Before following this peanut butter cake recipe, ask yourself the following:
- Do you like cake?
- Do you like peanut butter?
- Is anyone allergic to peanut butter?
If everything is good, you’re ready to make your peanut butter cake.
Peanut Butter Cake Recipe
Equipment
- 2 inch cake pans
- mixer
Ingredients
Cake Ingredients:
- 1 and 1/4th cup all-purpose flour
- 3/4th tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/3 cup unsalted butter
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1/2 cup buttermilk
- 2 large eggs
Peanut Butter Frosting
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter
- 1 cup creamy peanut butter
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 1/3 cup heavy cream
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease 2 9" cake pans and line with parchment paper.
- In a medium mixing bowl sift together the flour, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
- In a mixing bowl or with a stand mixer (paddle attachment), cream butter, peanut butter, and sugar until light and fluffy. Then add eggs 1 at a time.
- On the slow setting mix together dry ingredients into wet ingredients. Alternate dry and ingredients and buttermilk until fully combined. It will be light and fluffy.
- Add evenly into both cake pans. Cook for 25-30 minutes or until the toothpick comes out clean. Let cool completely.
- To make the frosting: Add butter, peanut butter and ⅓ cup heavy cream. Mix at low-speed until combined. Once completely combined add sugar.
- Once cake is completely cool, frost the cake and serve at room temperature.
A Few Notes:
- Don’t use natural peanut butter because it will crumble.
- Always use and grease the parchment paper. If you don’t, your cake will stick. This has been one of my learning lessons with baking in general.
- Buttermilk adds flavor.
- You can also freeze your peanut butter cake to give it a different texture. We froze the extra for later, and it was delicious in a different type of way.
- This is not the sweetest cake you’ve ever had in your life. If you are looking for that sugar high feeling, you’ll want to add more sugar.
- The peanut butter cake batter is much lighter and fluffier than other types of cake batter. When I finished mixing, it was almost mousse-like. I was slightly skeptical of “would this be a good cake,” but let me assure you it is. It’s by far the lightest and most fluffy cake batter I’ve made yet.
In all, this peanut butter cake recipe is one of my more favorite cakes I’ve made. Every week I say this will be “my last cake,” but I seem to keep baking them. It might be how I get through this winter.
I’ve been finding my recipes on Pinterest, and you can see all of my recipes here.
Questions for you:
Do you like peanut butter cake? What is your favorite type of cake?
What is a hobby you have that isn’t related to sports or work?