In the past, I've always made Justin a boxed yellow cake with a jar of chocolate frosting. He was perfectly happy with that. But, this year I set out to make a homemade version of his fave. I browsed the internet for the perfect recipe and came upon this one from Bakerella. And then to find a yummy chocolate buttercream- here from Lauren's Latest.
How to make it beautiful and personalized is up to you. I used more chocolate!
First of all, if you use this cake recipe, go ahead and try the spray bottle trick she suggests. My aversion to soggy cake of any kind made me leery of doing it, and my cake was, IMO, dry. I think I also overcooked it a tad. It went from wiggly and raw to overdone in such a small amount of time. I can only blame myself for that.
The buttercream turned out so delicious. I could have eaten it by the spoonful for sure. My almost-4-year-old taste tester liked it very much. It also ended up crusting very well, so next time I'll bust out my Viva paper towels and make it look nice and smooth.
So, after assembling my cake in two layers, I iced it generously. I then used the mini Reese's peanut butter cups that are already unwrapped, cut them in half, and arranged them on the cake. The original plan was to stick them all around the sides of the cake, but I felt they were too heavy to do that. This particular design used just a few more than one bag of them, so you could easily do two rings on top and just use one bag. (This is an 8" cake.)
You could, of course, put them in a bag and pound them with a mallet and place them on the sides for a more "rustic" look. I ended up alternating them up and down on the bottom. The 32 on top was an afterthought, but I thought it looked better than getting out my piping bag and scribbling "Happy Birthday" across my cake. That is definitely not my forte.
So easy! After posting a quick pic on Facebook, I was surprised (or not so surprised) that a picture of a chocolate cake gets more likes and comments than two really cute babies. Lol!
Here is the finished product:
Please excuse my lack of photography skills. I'm taking a photography class this Saturday as a a birthday present from my mom and dad. Yay!
I have three upcoming cookie projects in the next two months. I'm super excited- one birthday party, one baptism, and a wedding shower... Coming soon!
