Salted Peanut Butter Chocolate Cake

For a bit of a finale to Chocolate Week I thought I would make a layer cake - they always look impressive and I wanted a celebratory cake. Now whilst I am allergic to tree nuts I am lucky enough to be able to safely eat peanuts (and cashews) but I have never really paired them with chocolate before. I have seen many recipes where the pairing is made though, so thought it was about time I gave it a go (so many combinations of flavours, so little time to try them...).

The chocolate is my favourite standard recipe, with the added depth of muscovado sugar, and the peanut butter chocolate frosting comes courtesy of the Divine Chocolate Cookbook, which is rather appropriate given that Divine chocolate are the main sponsor/partner in Chocolate Week. I adapted the recipe to suit my tastes.

Salted Peanut Butter Chocolate Cake
Ingredients
175g softened butter
100g caster sugar
75g light muscovado sugar
3 eggs (with thanks to Suelle!!!)
155g self raising flour
25g cocoa powder
a couple of tbsp milk

Frosting
85g dark chocolate (I used 70%)
125g smooth peanut butter (mine was salted, but with no added sugar)
25g butter
cocoa powder (2tsp - optional)
icing sugar (to taste - optional)

Method
- Preheat the oven to 180C/gas 4. Grease and line two 8"/20cm round cake tins.
- Beat the butter and sugars until soft and light (the colour will change to being much lighter).
- Add the eggs, flour and cocoa powder. Beat until combined.
- If the mixture is too stiff (won't drop off a spoon), add a few tbsp of milk to soften.

- Divide the mixture between the two tins and bake for 25-30 minutes or until the sponge springs back when pressed and a cake tester comes out clean.

- Allow to cool on a wire rack.

- When the cakes are cool, or nearly cool, make the frosting.
- Melt the chocolate gently - either over a pan of simmering/hot water or in the microwave (carefully!).
- When melted, add the peanut butter and butter and beat until smooth.
- Taste the mixture and add cocoa powder and/or icing sugar to taste.
- Spread half of the mixture between the cakes and the other half on the top.

- Enjoy!

I have to say that this was a bit of a marmite type love/hate cake. Whereas most things I bake are well received this one did split the eater-ship slightly. The cake was universally liked, but the peanut butter frosting was slightly divisive, some liked it, some weren't so keen. I have to confess that I was in the not-so-keen camp, which was a little disappointing. Perhaps it's just a combination of flavours that I need to try again to appreciate more. After all, I love both peanut butter and chocolate, so they should theoretically be even better together! The other thing is that I used neither cocoa powder nor icing sugar in my frosting - it was late at night when I made it and I really didn't fancy tasting it at that point. Perhaps a touch of sugar would have made it much better because I think it was the salt of the peanut butter that perhaps skewed my taste off for this. I'll have to make it again and find out...

Chocolate Chunk Peanut Butter Cake

Chocolate Chunk Peanut Butter Cake - Artist's Impression....

Sometimes there doesn't need to be a reason. This was one of those times. Chocolate, peanut butter.... always a great combination.


Chocolate Chunk Peanut Butter Cake
Ingredients
65g butter
80g smooth peanut butter (although chunky would be fine)
125g light muscovado sugar
2 eggs
125g self raising flour
40g dark chocolate, chopped or broken into little chunks

Chocolate Frosting
Hmm, coming to write this post up a while after the event I have realised that I didn't make a note of which topping I used for this cake. It was quite a rich, dark chocolatey topping, definitely not very sweet so I have a feeling that it could have been 100g chocolate melted with about 35-40g butter and then allowed to cool to a spreadable consistency before being used to top the cake. The other option would be something similar but with a little golden syrup added too. Will try harder in the future to write up posts more quickly after making and eating the cake! You could always just use your favourite chocolate frosting for this!

Method
- Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Grease and line a 7"/18cm round tin. (I used my PushPan)
- Cream the butter, peanut butter and sugar together until light and smooth.
- Add the eggs and flour and continue to beat until well combined. Fold in the chopped chocolate.
- Spoon into the prepared tin and bake for around 45 minutes until a cake tester inserted comes out clean. (I didn't make a note of the exact time my cake took).
- Allow to cool a little in the tin and then turn out onto a wire rack and allow to finish cooling.

This was gorgeous - really light and moist and the chocolate chunks provided an excellent hit of chocolate in the cake to complement the dark chocolate topping. The frosting was smooth and rich and a great contrast to the light cake. The peanut flavour was obvious without being overwhelming (although I had expected it to be stronger) and because I had used smooth peanut butter there weren't any crunchy bits in the cake.

One to make again! And remember to photograph the next time. Complete fail, can't imagine what I was thinking here forgetting the photograph!

Chocolate Peanut Butter and Jam Cupcakes - Disaster Averted

Success

Regular readers will know that I have had numerous failures over the time that I have been blogging. I tend to share them because I hope that I have learnt something from my mistake (this is likely to be wishful thinking) and so that other people can learn from my mistakes. Sometimes a failure is just because I don't happen to like the end result, even if it was probably intended to turn out that way, sometimes a failure is down to a dodgy recipe and (quite often) a failure may just be down to my ineptness. It happens.

On the small side... wonder why?!

The majority of the failures are still edible, if not perfect. I had to share this one though because it was very nearly destined for the bin. I often use self raising flour, more often than I use plain flour. Guess what - this recipe is plain flour plus baking powder, or in my case, not plus baking powder. Fail. I realised as I checked the cakes after a while in the oven that the reason they really didn't seem to be rising very much (or at all...) was the fact that they were missing the vital raising agent. Not one of my finer moments. And so they were mentally destined for the bin.

But when they came out they just looked so dinky and more importantly smelled so, so delicious (can you imagine how good a cake containing peanut butter and light muscovado sugar smells while it is baking - it's delightfully nutty and yet caramelly too in a rich, complex way) that I couldn't resist a peek inside one of the cakes. Hmm, not too bad at all. Clearly not a well risen, light cake, but not the disasterous dense soggy mess that I had anticipated.

Plan B. Add jam. Peanut butter and jam (jelly for my American readers) is a combination made in heaven and the jam would also add moisture to the buns - they were a little on the dry side. Then as an added extra, melted chocolate dolloped onto the top would round off this treat very nicely. So I dug out a little cone from each cake, lopped a little of the soft crumb off, added a little raspberry jam and replaced the lid. When all my cakes were doctored with jam I melted chocolate (Cadbury's Dairy Milk here because although I'm a dark chocolate fiend there is something rather lovely about peanut butter and milk chocolate) and smoothed it generously over the top.

Need I really tell you that these went well at work? I'm going to make them again with the added raising agent because I think they'll be stunning with a little more lift. So my lesson here is not to write off a potential disaster until I've had a good inspection and a sneaky nibble too.

In fact, they were so good that I have already made them again with the added raising agent and as anticipated they were even better than before. The flavour is gently peanut buttery complemented by the jam and finished off with sweet chocolate - utterly delicious. Yum, even the memory of these is making me crave peanut butter!

Now the challenge for We Should Cocoa (hosted by Choclette) this month is almonds and is being guest hosted by Laura (@laura_howtocook) of How To Cook Good Food. When she announced the theme as almonds I was obviously disappointed, being allergic to them. However, I quickly tweeted and asked if I could make something with a different nut, and being rather lovely she said yes, this wouldn't be a problem. So hopefully these peanut butter cupcakes will be an honorary almond entry from someone who really wanted to enter, but didn't want to make herself ill..... And you could just as easily make them with almond butter too :-)

As the recipe has come straight from one of my books (a baking book from Marks and Spencer) I don't feel able to share the recipe here, but this combination is fabulous - I'm sure a search for a cupcake recipe with smooth peanut butter and light muscovado sugar will yield good results - or feel free to email me/leave a comment and I'll share that way!

Chilli Chocolate Fudge Cake

It seems only right that my celebration of Chocolate Week should contain my submission to We Should Cocoa, the challenge designed to celebrate chocolate in all ways throughout the year. This time, Choclette from Chocolate Log Blog is hosting and she has chosen chilli as the ingredient to pair with chocolate for this month's challenge.

A tricky one, I'm sure you'll agree, but instead of remembering things I'd like it to, my brain is littered with the sparks associated with recipes I've seen and been meaning to make for ages. So when the chilli challenge  was announced, this recipe from Dan Lepard immediately popped it's head up and demanded attention. Apparently my memory is pretty long for cake related issues, as this recipe was first posted in September 2008.

I made only minor changes to the recipe - I substituted crunchy peanut butter for the tahini, as I don't have tahini and I do have peanut butter and wanted to use it up. I used the smaller amount of chilli flakes (1/4tsp). I also used the stipulated 8" square tin rather than the pictured round one!!!

The recipe was a little involved to make, with a few different steps, but none of them were difficult. I think the cake was probably done at 1 hour, but I left mine a further 10 minutes, which may have been a mistake...

The chilli heat was a slow build, you couldn't really tell it was there at first, but there was a chilli aftertaste. The predominant taste was of peanuts, and the contrasting lime icing was really delicious and refreshing, I wish there had been more icing to cake - perhaps baking in a shallower tin would help here. The cake was very crumbly in texture, and I don't know whether this is how it was meant to be, or whether I'd overbaked it, but it was tricky to pick up and eat! It was really well received at work, and I had a recipe request (with the requestee being directed to the Guardian website!) too!

All in all, not my favourite chocolate cake, but definitely an interesting and different kind of chocolate cake for the more adventurous baker/eater of chocolate cakes!

We Should Cocoa - Chocolate Peanut Butter Mega Flapjack

We should cocoa is one! Happy Birthday! To celebrate the first birthday of the best chocolate blogging event out there, Chele at Chocolate Teapot has invited us all to create a tasty chocolate treat that we would like to see at the virtual first birthday party. I can't believe it's been a year since the first we should cocoa was announced - how time flies. I do remember being very excited about the challenge though, and very pleased that the first ingredient was raspberries - I love raspberries and made them into this delicious cake.

It took me a while, but I eventually decided on these flapjacks. I think they'd be great to take to a party - lots of other people have made cake for the party so I fancied something a little different. This recipe is based on Dan Lepard's Halva flapjack, a recipe I have seen lots and lots of bloggers making. You can find the original recipe here. I'm still not sure about using tahini so I decided to adapt the recipe to suit what I had available (hello ginormous jar of peanut butter) and what I fancied eating (mmm, cranberries and chocolate). Dan says that the use of tahini in this recipe allows less butter to be used and that when heated tahini goes fudgy. Now, clearly tahini is made from sesame seeds and peanut butter from peanuts, but both seeds and nuts are high in fats and have the same sort of paste consistency so I was hoping that using PB wouldn't lead me far wrong with the recipe.

Foodycat noted that the recipe needed to be cooked for longer than Dan stated and that hers was still very gooey in the middle after the stated time. She also recommended using the full amount of oats. So with these recommendations in mind, here is my adapted version of Dan's original recipe.

Chocolate Peanut Butter and Cranberry Flapjack
Ingredients
100g butter
75g light muscovado sugar
200g condensed milk
75g peanut butter (mine was a crunchy 100% peanut version)
50g honey
100g dried cranberries
100g chocolate, chopped
225g oats

Method

- Grease and line an 8"/20cm square tin with baking parchment. Preheat the oven to gas 4/180C.

- Melt the butter, sugar and condensed milk in a saucepan until hot and the sugar has dissolved.

- Remove from the heat and add the PB and honey and then the dried cranberries. Mix well.

- Add in the oats and mix fairly well, then add the chopped chocolate and mix until everything is evenly distributed.

- Spoon into the prepared tin, smoothing the surface and bake until pale golden. Dan states 15-20 minutes, I found mine needed at least 30.

- Remove from tin and allow to cool, but cut whilst still slightly warm if possible.

Notes

- I added the chocolate along with the oats rather than earlier to stop it all melting into one chocolate blob. This way I reckon the oats have taken the heat out of the mixture. But don't hang around while you're mixing it.

- I cut mine when cold and it was still soft enough to do this.

- My house smelled deliciously of hot peanut butter and chocolate while these were cooking. A particularly delicious combination...

Wow, these were fab! They were lovely and fudgy in the middle and the combination of chocolate, peanut butter and dried cranberries was like eating a particularly decadent version of one of my favoured sandwiches, peanut butter and jam. Mmmm! The cranberries were great at providing just a little tartness and the chocolate was, well, chocolate - i.e. delicious! I will make these again and wish I had made them earlier! I think that they would be particularly good at a party (especially if you want to pretend that the oats are good for the little children attending!) so although they're not flashy or over the top, they are my submission.

If you want to see my other submissions to We should Cocoa here they are:

September - Chocolate raspberry cake (raspberries)

October - Triple chocolate and hazelnut crunchies (hazelnuts)

November - Chocolate caramel cupcakes with caramel buttercream (caramel)

December - Chocolate date crumble bar (dates)

January - Chocolate box cake (leftovers)

February - (tea)

March - Chocolate cupcakes with chocolate lime buttercream (lime)

April - (marzipan)

May - Chocolate roulade with black forest buttercream (roulades)

June - White chocolate and strawberry muffins (strawberries)

July - (apricot)

August - Chocolate rose rice pudding (rose)

Hmm, must try harder this year to complete all the challenges! Can't wait to see what's in store for us all!