Peanut Butter Cup Cake and the Baking Fail

Kitten watched the destruction of my kitchen
and my epic baking failure. 

Recently I decided to take on the challenge of making a birthday cake, my initial idea was ice cream cake! DUH! It's been so hot out that ice cream would be the perfect solution. I should've kept this idea to myself because I failed miserably and it was so awful. So I started out making an ice cream cake the way I thought made sense, soften the ice cream, put it into my 9x11 pan and freeze it over night. Well all is good so far but then I had two 1-1/2 layers added on top, let the freeze and then decided to frost it. This is where things went haywire. My apartment is SOOOO hot that I couldn't get through 2 minutes of frosting before the ice cream was oozing out the bottom. So I would put it back in the freezer and chill it then attack again. This would have worked had the weight of the cake not been squishing the ice cream layer on bottom. So it wasn't just the heat affecting the ice cream it was the cake itself. So after I get home from work, its about midnight and I need this cake done by morning, I decided maybe I can just rearrange the layers. And then it hits me: how the heck am I supposed to get this cake to the party anyway without it melting? My AC in my car isn't working and to my surprise my ice chest is too small. UGH! By this time I'm nearly in tears because I am such a perfectionist. But then I took a breath and decided I would just have to make a regular cake in the morning before the party and just have to live with it. So at 7:30am I'm at Walmart getting new supplies and baking this dang cake. Thankfully the results were good and everyone loved it! So here is the alternative cake that I made, Peanut Butter Cup Cake.

Peanut Butter Cup Cake:

What you need:


Chocolate Cake Mix
Vanilla Cake Mix
Eggs
Veggie Oil
Peanut Butter Cups, cut in 1/4, and chopped.
2-3 containers of Chocolate Frosting

What to do:

If you have seen my Moose Tracks Cupcakes I did the same process to make the marbled cake. Mix the chocolate and vanilla in separate bowls then swirl together in a pan. I used a 1 cup measuring cup and did probably 2-3 cups of both chocolate and vanilla in my greased 9x11 inch pan. Bake as directed, 350 for about 18 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Chill and set aside. You should be able to make 2 layers which is all you need.




Once the layers are chilled the level them and frost the bottom layer with chocolate frosting so that the second layer can stick to it. I added the 1/4 cut peanut butter cups for a little extra something in the middle.

The top with the second layer that has been leveled as well. Frost the whole cake with the chocolate frosting. I attempted to pipe Happy Birthday and that didn't look good at all but I just went with it because I didn't have the time to fix it.

With all of your chopped up pieces of peanut butter cups (this gets messy) squish them into the side of your cake and let the frosting act as a velcro wall. I piped the top edge with chocolate to make it look a little more polished but you don't necessarily have to.

Final Product

Even though everyone loved the cake, and it was delicious, I was really disappointed with my frosting skills. Especially after seeing my friend Melina make this beaut! So you can see why I want to open a bakery with this girl! She's so AMAZING!

Melina's cake she made 

But I've come to the conclusion I will just stick to cupcakes because cakes are just too overwhelming for me and at least with cupcakes you can make mistakes and people don't really notice. Cakes are observable from all sides. Cupcakes aren't as out there. So with struggle came a success...and a bit of jealousy the Melina is so much better at piping than me haha.