Delicious, Delicious Cake

[iesika]

P's birthday is this weekend. I'm throwing a Not Really Watching The Superbowl Party tomorrow (P, M, B,  L, and possibly L's boyfriend will be there), and have already made my white chili. I'm contemplating making a black bean dip. There will be chips and salsa and apples with caramel, and, of course, birthday cake. P loves Reese's more than life itself, so I played around with a few things and made him a Chocolate/ Peanut Butter Cake (and practiced my icing calligraphy!)

3 - Layer Chocolate Cake

1 cup cocoa powder, unsweetened
2 cups water, boiling
2 3/4 cups flour, all-purpose, sifted
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup butter, soft
2 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
4 eggs

Whisk the cocoa into the boiling water until smooth. Let cool. Preheat oven to 350°F and prepare 3 9-inch layer pans

Mix your dry ingredients.  Cream butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla, and gradually add in the dry ingredients and the liquid chocolate.
Pour into prepared pans, and bake 25-30 minutes. Cool in pans until you can touch them comfortably, then dump the layers out onto a rack and let them cool completely. Brush the crumbs off the layers before you ice them. The layers will be kind of thin. More room for filling!

Peanut Butter Filling

1/2 cup butter, soft
1 cup creamy peanut butter
3 tbsp milk
2 cups powdered sugar
a little vanilla

Cream the butter and peanut butter until smooth, then gradually add in the sugar, and the milk and vanilla. Whip until fluffy, but be careful, because the filling will dry out. Should be fluffy and almost mousse-like. If you get it too dry, add a little more milk. In order to decorate with the filling, I thinned it out considerably with more milk, to make it manageable.

Chocolate Frosting

I am a filthy cheat. Duncan Hines makes a good whipped chocolate frosting. One large can was exactly enough to frost this cake
 

Comments

[kasra-c.livejournal.com]

We're having one of those parties tomorrow as well. Despite both of us growing up in Pittsburgh neither of us have ever sat through an entire football game, and the fact that it's the Steelers is all the more reason to avoid the Superbowl for us. Normally we'd just go out to dinner and enjoy the empty restaurants, but so many of them are closing early because of the Superbowl (so the employees won't call off sick last minute in order to watch the game) that I guess we're going to eat in. :p

[iesika.livejournal.com]

Oh, is that who's playing?

I only knew it was coming up because of the Puppy Bowl commercials. But my parents have a big tv, and B was going to be staying over Sunday anyway (she lives in Lafayette an needs to be in BR for Monday morning), and she and P like manly things like superbowl parties. And L informed me that he would have to turn in his penis if he skipped watching it again. And I like throwing parties!

Mostly it's an excuse to feed my friends. M and I discussed the possibility of watching Firefly instead. ^_^;