Peanut Butter Layer Cake

Here are some cakes that I did for the bake sale last week. They were already accounted for before the bake sale even started so I really didn't sell these AT the bake sale. It's a peanut butter layer cake with a crunchy peanut butter cream cheese icing. I figured that icing the same cake the same way twice would be boring so I mixed it up. So yeah, same cake, same frosting, different way of decorating.



To frost/decorate the reese's cake....
1) Frost the top of the bottom layer and put the other cake on top
2) Frost a thin layer of frosting on the entire cake to help seal in the crumbs
3) Apply a thicker, more decorative layer of frosting to the entire cake
4) This cake is roughly frosted for texture
5) Crush Reese's cups and scoop and press them onto the side of the cake

To frost/decorate the line-ey cake
1) Follow the first 3 steps of the other cake's directions
2) While applying the decorative layer, dip your offset spatula (or whatever you are using to frost the cake) in milk (i'm sure water would work fine too)
**This creates the "smooth look" of the frosting
3) Once you've frosted the whole cake smoothly, melt chocolate bark and scoop into a ziploc bag
4) Snip the very very teeny tiny end of the bag off
5) Gently start squeezing the bag over the cake going side to side
6) Every once in a while, stop, turn the cake, and begin squeezing the bag again (to get lines going in different directions




Ingredients
-2 cups AP flour
-2 teaspoons baking powder
-1 cup creamy peanut butter
-1 stick butter or margarine (softened)
-1 cup granulated sugar
-1/2 cup packed brown sugar
-2 large eggs
-2 teaspoons vanilla extract
-3/4 cup milk
-peanut butter cream cheese frosting
*1 stick butter or margarine (softened)
*1 cup crunchy peanut butter
*1 package (3 oz) cream cheese(softened)
*1 tsp vanilla
*2 cups powdered sugar
*3 tbls milk

Directions
1) Preheat oven to 350. Grease 2 (9 in) baking rounds.
2) In a medium bowl, stir together flour and baking powder
3) In a large bowl, with mixer at medium speed, beat peanut butter, butter and both sugars for 3 minutes or until creamy.
4) Add eggs one at a time, beating well after eah addition. Beat in vanilla. Reduce speed to low.
5) Add flour mixture alternatedly with milk, beginning and ending with flour mixture.
6) Turn batter into prepared pans and spread evenly. Bake 20-30 minutes or until toothpick into the center comes out clean.
7) Cool cake completely in pan on wire rack.

Frosting Directions
1) In a lagre bowl, with mixer at medium speed, beat softened butter, peanut butter, cream cheese, and vanilla until smooth ad fluffy.
2) Add powdered sugar and 2 tablespoons milk. Beat until blended. Increase speed to medium-high and beat for 2 minutes or until fluffy; adding remaining milk as needed for desired consistency.


*****Some things I will do differently next time
1) Double the recipe and make 4 layers...the cake was kind of short
2) Frost the cake as SOON as it is cool (the cake dries out really fast so you need to seal in the moisture asap)...it was hard to frost it when it needed to be because of all the other baking I was doing at the time.