This weekend I had the pleasure of making a birthday cake for a friend of mine. Birthday cakes are always one of my favorite things to make, because it gives me a chance to try to capture a particular person’s favorite taste or flavor combination and people are always so happy to have a homemade cake. And not to mention that birthdays are the perfect time to break out a show stopping layer cake…not that I know anyone who likes to make those…
This particular cake is one that I’ve made before, but it’s just so good, it deserves to be made at every chance. It’s from the wonderful Sky High cookbook, which is an amazing yet simple cookbook dedicated completely to making layer cakes. The recipe is also available on smitten kitchen, although I think her instructions do make it sound a little bit harder than it is. The book calls the cake Chocolate Sour Cream Cake with Peanut Butter icing, but I like to think of it as the Peanut Butter Dreams Cake. Why? Because if you’re a peanut butter and chocolate lover, this is the cake you have been dreaming of your entire life. The cake is almost brownie like in taste but lighter in texture, and the icing–well let’s just say it’s always a struggle not to go at it with a spoon. It’s cream cheese and peanut butter, which on first thought you think wouldn’t work, but believe me IT SO WORKS!
You may notice that my kitchen seems to morph in the middle of these pictures. Nope, it’s not the magic of the interwebs (now you have no backsplash! now you do!) but rather a magical traveling mixer. Since the friend who was the recipient of the cake it married to another friend of mine, we decided it would be more fun if we iced and assembled the cake together. And you know what, it really was.
What a beauty it is, all iced and ganached up and ready for the show–er I mean the slicing!
Now, you chocolate peanut butter lovers are probably thinking–why such a small slice?! Well be warned, this cake is so rich, it will knock your socks off. Not that you won’t want to keep eating it. You will. Just in very thin slices, as the birthday boy said “every hour, on the hour, with milk.” A happy birthday indeed.
