Which means…CAKE!

Today is my friend & co-worker’s b-day today. So of course I used it as an excuse for cake!

I’ve been wanting to try a peanut butter cake, so a few days ago, I made an almond cake & cupcakes and a peanut butter cake and cupcakes. I wasn’t sure how the PB would taste overall, but the batter was good. ;-) I was planning to bring Brenda the almond until I found out she didn’t like almond cake, so the PB it was.

The Icing Adventure

I didn’t really feel like making buttercream (mainly b/c I’m lazy and hate clean-up), so I decided to try a homemade whipped cream for the icing. I stopped by Wal-mart on my way home from the theatre classes I teach on Tuesdays so I could grab some whipping cream and various chocolate chips. (And there’s another story: the time a creepy man hit on me by asking me if I liked cheese.)

And then the adventure began. I made my whipped cream, which was delicious, and then added some melted milk chocolate. Also delicious. Then I thought I’d try to make some ganache for filler (white chocolate) and drizzle (milk chocolate).

Unfortunately, I did not actually even look at the measurements in the recipe, so the filling was a bit grainy and runny. It still tasted good (and is my favorite part of the PB cake), but I needed to put a solid wall of icing around the edges and it still ran over a bit.

The drizzled ganache turned out well. I didn’t like the flavor overall, but on the cake it was yummy. Added some chopped up reese’s cups, and there you go. All done.

I  just brought in some of the almond cupcakes and used store-bought caramel icing to top them. (Which I heard was amazing; haven’t tried mine yet.)

And now… PICTURES:

of course I forgot to take a pic before I cut it…