It’s safe to say, this cake is good. But really, there’s  not much bad to say about chocolate and peanut butter together, right? It works, it’s delicious, and it’s hard to mess up. This cake has been approved by two pregnant ladies, a birthday girl, and a husband who says he doesn’t like dessert.

The original recipe is a coffee-chocolate cake but since I hate coffee, I just made a few adjustments to make a peanut butter chocolate cake. Soooo good. Also, I cut it in half and made mini bundt cakes. Check out Amanda’s post from Homekeeping Adventure with the almost original recipe for Mahogany Cake for this week’s Project Pastry Queen.

INGREDIENTS
Cake
½ C unsalted butter, at room temperature
¾ C sugar
2 large eggs
¼ C boiling water
¼ C unsweetened cocoa powder
½ C sour cream
½ tsp vanilla extract
1 C sifted cake flour (sifted then measured)
½ tsp baking powder
⅛ tsp baking soda
⅛ tsp salt
4 oz. peanut butter filled chocolate (I happened to have a Godiva chocolate bar filled with peanut butter and a few bittersweet baking chips but you could use Reese’s or anything else.)

Peanut Butter Chocolate Icing
¼ C boiling water
3 Tbls unsweetened cocoa powder
2 Tbls unsalted butter, melted
3 Tbls peanut butter
1 Tbls vanilla extract
¼ tsp salt
2 C sifted powdered sugar (sifted then measured)

DIRECTIONS
Cake
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Grease 6 mini-bundt cake pans.
3. Using a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl on medium speed about 2 minutes, until fluffy.
4. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating on medium speed about 20 seconds after each addition.
5. Pour the boiling water into a medium bowl.
6. Stir in the cocoa until smooth.
7. Stir in the sour cream and vanilla.
8. Place the sifted flour in another medium bowl.
9. Stir in the baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
10.  Add about ⅓ of the flour mixture to the butter-sugar mixture and beat on medium speed until just combined.
11. Add half of the cocoa-sour cream mixture and beat until just combined.
12. Continue adding the dry and wet ingredients alternately.
13. Stir in the chopped chocolate.
14. Spoon the batter into the prepared pans.
15. Bake for 20-25 min until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
16. Cool for 5 minutes in the pan, invert onto a rack, and cool for 20 minutes before icing.

Icing – It’s best to ice the cakes while cakes are still warm (not hot!)
1. Pour the boiling water into a medium bowl.
2. Stir in the cocoa until smooth.
3. Stir in the butter, peanut butter and vanilla until smooth.
4. Add the salt and powdered sugar. Stir until smooth.
5. Set the cake on individual serving plates and spoon the icing over it, covering it completely.
6. After 30 min, cover with plastic wrap.

NOTES
Adapted from Pastry Queen’s Mahogany Cake.

Serves 6.

If you want to double the recipe and use a 10-12 C bundt pan, double everything except for the following: increase to 3 eggs, only 4 oz total chocolate chunks per original recipe, and icing recipe is as is (there’s a lot more surface area to cover with mini cakes so I made the full batch).

The covered glazed cake will keep at least 2 days at room temperature. It can be frozen up to 3 weeks.