Chocolate peanut butter cake

With all of the stressors arising in the past couple weeks, I had the urge to throw my "eat better" attitude  in the garbage and make a chocolatey dessert that I could drown my sorrows in. This cake has done the job.

The best dessert combo on this planet is chocolate and peanut butter. Hands down, no question. I don't care what anyone says! Plus, I don't think dessert is dessert without a lil' chocolate anyway. I looked up a traditional chocolate cake recipe, and edited the ingredients just a bit. I was thrilled to find Nigella Lawson's recipe bc she said throwing all the ingredients in a bowl at once and mixing was protocol. This was music to my ears since I wanted to get the baking out of the way. I just wanted to eat and didn't feel like sifting dry ingredients, mixing wet ingredients separately, bla bla bla.

I didn't have sour cream, so I subbed in fat-free ricotta cheese. I also minimized the amount of sugar, since I wanted a chocolatey, cocoa cake rather than a super sweet cake. Instead of 1 cup, I think I used 3/4. I had, literally, zero of my usual "healthy substitutes" in my pantry, so I had to deal. This post will be reflective of my recent lazy, whatever attitude in that I'm just going to give you the link to the cake. I didn't use the icing recipe, however.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/nigella-lawson/old-fashioned-chocolate-cake-recipe/index.html

Love using my cake stand!
Special thanks to my wonderful, fellow baking-loving friend, Courtney!

I made two 8" round cakes, cooled them, and filled them a with the peanut butter filling. Now this was yummy stuff. It was a simple mix of 1 cup peanut butter, 1 tbs butter, 1 tbs margarine, and powdered sugar until you reach the consistency and taste you want (probably around 2/3 cup). I over whipped the filling, thinking I could make it super fluffy. So don't over mix! It still tasted awesome, but it got kind of grainy-ish.

What I love about this cake is that the cake part wasn't overwhelmingly sweet, nor was the filling. I used a light hand with the powdered sugar, therefore it was more peanut buttery in flavor rather than sweetness overload it can sometimes be.



I'd really like to see how this comes out with better ingredients, AKA sugar sub, fat-free PB, etc., but sometimes you just need the good stuff!