Due to network TV's summer hiatus we are able to finally catch up on entire seasons of shows. One of these is Cake Boss - which is great to watch as a family. Evelyn loves to see the finished cakes and is always stacking her toys on top of each other and saying "Mommy/Daddy, I made you a cake" or "Let's eat some cake!!!" (Her own play on Buddy's "Who wants to eat some cake?!"
Yesterday was Joe's 30th birthday and Evelyn wanted to make him a chocolate cake. So we did. I played with the idea of mint chocolate chip frosting, but I invented those Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies for him already. Joe's second favorite sweet to eat is Reese's peanut butter cups and he loves peanut butter pie. So I decided to go with that idea.
Last night before we dug in I posted a picture on Facebook of the cake Evelyn and I made for him and it blew up with comments and "likes" - so I decided to share the recipe here for others to make. I captioned the photo with "For Joe's 30th birthday, I made him a 30,000 calorie cake." I brainstormed some other names for the cake, but like the original better.
I totally copped out and used a boxed chocolate cake mix. I used Duncan Hines Dark Chocolate Fudge cake mix and even though I substituted 3/4 Cup of milk and 1/4 Cup of Hershey's chocolate syrup for the 1 cup of water - it still wasn't chocolately enough for me. Next time I'll do a homemade chocolate cake batter instead.
In short, make the chocolate cake of your choice. I split mine between 2 9 inch round pans for baking so I could stack them.
Sidenote: I usually use milk instead of water for any baking mix. It makes it more moist.
Next I made the frosting - which I just kind of made up as I went based off of a cream cheese frosting recipe.
Peanut Butter Frosting:
4 Cups Powdered Sugar
1 1/2 Cups Creamy Peanut Butter
8 ounces of 1/3rd less fat Cream Cheese**
1 stick of Unsalted Butter
1/4 Cup Crisco
Make sure the cream cheese and butter are room temperature before mixing. Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and mix them together. (It's that easy!)
After the cakes had cooled completely I laid down one layer and sprinkled some mini Reese's peanut butter cups on top.
Next I added the second cake layer and frosted the entire top and outside of the cake with the peanut butter frosting.
Last, I grabbed some semi sweet chocolate chips and the rest of the mini peanut butter cups and smashed them into the sides and top of the cake. It really was delicious and not as rich as I expected. We enjoyed it with 2% milk!
Joe had a great birthday and after a Chipotle dinner and some cake we were stuffed. I still felt full this morning!
If anyone has a suggestion for a good boxed chocolate cake mix please comment. I need to know some others to try.
not 30,000 calories, Beth :(
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