Cake Madness - Day 14

Cake of the Day: Peanut Butter Cup Cake

This cake was inspired by a picture a friend found online. She posted it on Facebook and suggested that I make it as one of my Cake Challenge cakes. I thought I had all of my cakes planned out, but it looked way too good not to try, and one of our other coworkers decided to sponsor it, so it worked out great. 

While doing my research for the cake (since my coworker just had a picture, not a recipe), I found two options: Dulce Dough Peanut Butter Cup Cake or Annie's Eats Peanut Butter Cup Cake. While I liked the looks of Annie's Eats cake better, I've been using her recipes a lot and wanted to branch out a bit. Also, the Dulce Dough recipe was all on one page, where Annie's was separated into cake page and frosting page, so I went for simplicity and decided on the recipe from Dulce Dough with Annie's decorating scheme . . .bad idea. 

I really should have known better. When I started making this cake I thought, "this isn't how you make a cake . . .I think I should know by now". I thought that the way it was put together was a little off and when it came time to add the chocolate (only 2 oz. compared to the Annie's Eats recipe with 4 oz. plus 1/2 C. cocoa powder) I was scouring the recipe for the cocoa powder, but there was none. I decided to just trust the recipe and hope for the best. Let's just say it came out more of a chocolate chip cake than a chocolate cake, very bland and dry in my opinion, I will not use that recipe in the future. 

The frosting couldn't make up for my disappointment in the cake, but it really tried. Come on, can a combination of peanut butter, butter, and sugar really be bad? ;) Overall, the presentation was nice (although I have my husband to thank for that as he handled the unruly frosting and chopped up the Reese's for me), but the cake was not all that I was hoping for. 

Here are some of the comments from this cake: 

• Can you fit any more peanut butter flavor into a cake? p.s. I love peanut butter
• I like the base cake but it was a little bland. I've found that ginger works well with peanuts. It would be fun to try.
• Great presentation, next to the dragon this was the best yet. 
• Delicious
• This is another one of my favorites
• Amazing! Need a glass of milk now. Thanks.
• It's Delicious! I'm a sucker for Peanut Butter Cup
• A little rich for my taste, but very good and presented well.
• Yummy YUMMY YUMMY!!!!
• The frosting is absolutely amazing, wow. You're right about the cake . . .but maybe it balances out the richness of the frosting? I think it works. Yum. 

So, I guess it went over well, even if it wasn't exactly what I was planning on :)

Mmm, peanut butter cups :)