Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake - a là Nigella Lawson

 Mr P. can still surprise me after all these years: he doesn't like chocolate and peanut butter together!  Quelle horreur!  I used to make a fluffy PB cheesecake on a chocolate crust.  He told me after some years that he didn't like it.  Whaaaat the?  Sacrilege, my dears.  But I love the salty, sweet combo, so this is right up my alley, and down my gullet.

Here we have another Nigella recipe, from her book Cook, Eat, Repeat.  I've said before that Nigella has been a lasting influence on my cooking - her simple techniques and family-friendly flavours.  A friend of mine recently spoke of her with disdain - to my horror.  He thought she was uppity and snobby and so on.  Hmmmph, is all I can say to that.  Though I have to confess, when I saw her 'in concert' so to speak a few years ago, she was - mmm - incredibly dull.  Perhaps if she weren't beautiful and rich and well-connected ...     

soooo delicious, she says modestly

Serves 8-12:

ingredients:

for the cake:

200g./7oz unsalted butter (use salted if you wish; I won't tell) which you have chopped into biiiig chunks

250 mL/8.5oz just-boiled water

50g./1.8oz cocoa

100g./3.5oz soft dark brown sugar 

125g./4.5oz caster sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

225g./8oz plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp bicarb of soda

2 large eggs 

For the icing:

300g./10.5oz icing sugar (powdered sugar)

150g./5.3oz unsalted butter, at room temp.

200g./7oz smooth peanut butter

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 tsp fine sea salt

4 x 15mL/0.5oz tbs thickened cream/double cream

Decorate with:

a couple of palmfuls (Nigella says 60g./2oz) of roasted peanuts or nuts of your choice

Method:

Whack your oven on at 180C/350F

Butter 2 x 20cm/8 inch cake tins, and line with baking paper 

Grab a large and wide (ish) saucepan, into which you put the butter, the boiled water, the cocoa and both sugars

Have it on a low heat, and whisk gently away till everything is beautifully amalgamated

Take it off the heat, whisk in the vanilla, and leave to cool for five minutes

In a smallish mixing bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder and bicarb soda together

Grab a small jug and whisk the eggs lightly together

Pour and whisk the eggs gradually into the cocoa mixture till well combined

Lastly, whisk in the flour mixture gently till you have a beautiful, smooth, dark batter

Pour into the prepared tins, and bake for 18-20 minutes - till a skewer (yes, you guessed it) is plunged into its dark heart and comes out kinda/mostly clean

Let the cakes sit around (on racks) ruminating on life for fifteen minutes while you make the icing

Sift the icing sugar/mixture into a large bowl 

Grab another large mixing bowl (or the stand mixer bowl if using), and beat the PB and butter together for 3-5 minutes (five mins. with a hand whisk), then beat in the vanilla and salt

Now add the icing sugar bit by bit into the butter/PB mix; and keep going till all the sugar is incorporated (you can get a bit frisky after you've beaten half the sugar in, and go for it in three biiiig amounts)

Keep beating for three minutes; scrape the mixture down and beat for another minute

And add the cream spoon by spoon, (whilst still beating), then keep beating for six minutes until it's soft and light and airy

Peel off the baking paper from the cooled cake bottoms, lay one layer down on a serving plate, flat-side up and spread a third of the icing over the cake with an angled/offset palette knife/spatula   

On goes the second cake layer, flat-side down (dome-side up), and slap on another third of the icing, all over the top of the cake

The rest of the icing goes over the sides of the whole cake; smooth it out and top with the nuts (or not, as you choose)

The cake will last in an airtight container for 3-4 days, or in the fridge if you live in sunny, humid Queensland :-)

Notes:

Nigella says you can make this in 4 shallow cake tins; if you're interested in that, check out her website, 'cos I think 2 layers is fine

I quite like salted butter in sweets, so go ahead and use it if you wish in the cake and the icing

Okay, I confess; I used icing mixture, not icing sugar!  Who cares?  It's so much easier to use

And I reckon I'll use crunchy PB next time.  I like it crunchy!  Just don't use the health-store stuff; Nigella says to use regular commercial PB

whisk in the water, cocoa and sugars with the butter

whisk the flour, baking powder and bicarb soda, then the eggs, 

lastly you add in the flour mixture after the eggs

pour the batter into the prepared tins

beat the devil out of that PB and butter

till you get this

spread a third of the icing over the bottom layer

iced and ready to go

afternoon tea

Mr P. had his lady employee in on the day I made this beauty; he had a designer mate from up north visiting, and another northern lady designer in, and then another designer mate dropped by, and I took some over to our elderly neighbour, and then Princess Pia dropped by for a piece ...  By the end of the day, we had demolished much of the cake.  But I did put the rest in the fridge.  It's hot and it's humid here, and I didn't want buttercream icing slip-sliding away.  

(Joining up with Marg from The Intrepid Reader for Weekend Cooking.)

© Sherry's Pickings