Chocolate, Peanut Butter & Coffee Flavored Birthday Cake

Ian celebrated his birthday earlier this month and he had requested a chocolate cake with peanut butter filling and coffee frosting.  Ian just loves anything with coffee, chocolate, and peanut butter and since I do too I was eager to help Alec make the cake.

We decided to try and find an easier chocolate cake recipe than the one we usually use and we found a real winner with The Stay At Home Chef's Most Amazing Chocolate Cake Recipe the only problem was that the cake recipe was for a 3 layer cake and we only had two cake pans.  I happily did the math, showing Alec how we could figure out 2/3 of each of the ingredients.

If you don't want to do the math yourself I'm sharing the recipe with the amounts we used.

For the Cake:

2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
3 large eggs
1 cup buttermilk (We used 1 cup of milk with 1 Tablespoon of white vinegar mixed together)
1 cup warm water
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 tsp. vanilla extract.

All the dry ingredients are mixed together at low speed in the stand mixer for a few minutes until combined and then we added all the wet ingredients in making sure to mix together on medium speed for 2-3 minutes until well combined.   We divided our batter into two greased and floured cake pans and baked in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes.

It is a very runny cake batter but made a very moist cake.

Once the cakes had cooled and we leveled them we began mixing up the peanut butter filling.

For the Filling:

3 Tablespoons Butter
1 cup creamy peanut butter
1 1/3 cup powdered sugar
3 Tablespoons milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract

We put the filling in a nice thick layer between the two cakes.  We did have a bit of peanut butter filling left over so I put it in a Ziploc bag and stored it in the refrigerator.

For the Frosting:

3 Tablespoons instant coffe
2 Tablespoons boiling water
1 cup butter; softened
3 cups powdered sugar
2 Tablespoon Milk

I boiled up a cup of water in the microwave and measured out 2 Tablespoons of water into a small glass dish. I measured out 3 Tablespoons of instant coffee and added it to the water stirring until it was dissolved.  Then I let it cool off to room temperature.  It will be thick like syrup.

In the stand mixer I used my whisked the butter until it was light and fluffy and then slowly added the powdered sugar, milk, and coffee.  If your frosting is thin you'll need to add a bit of confectioners sugar and if it's thick you'll want to add another Tablespoon or two of milk.

Once my frosting was ready; I scraped down the sides of my bowl and used a long cake spatula to smooth some frosting over the top of my cake. The trick is to use even pressure and keep the spatula nice and parallel to the cake; pushing the frosting as you go. 

When I was happy with the top of the cake, I filled up my piping bag.  Using my star tip I went around the sides of the cake using nice long strokes from bottom to top. Then I added a small star border around the top edge of my cake and it was finished!

Ian loved his cake!  It was so flavorful and had the perfect crumbly cake consistency that we just love.

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