There are so many neat videos online that give an insider’s view of all kinds of professions.
For some reason, I can get absolutely lost watching someone power wash a driveway, paint fingernails or frost cakes and cookies.
And then I have it in my head that I could also easily accomplish any of these seemingly mundane tasks—especially if it deals with the kitchen.
I think that’s why I got especially frustrated this past weekend when I could not, for the life of me, properly frost the chocolate cake I was planning on taking for a family lunch. The thick peanut butter frosting only wanted to stick to my knife, my hands or itself, but it was completely immune to sticking to my soft cake.
It was one of those moments where Joey came in the kitchen, asked how things were going, and then slowly backed away and out of the room after seeing the frustration on my face.
So, the bad news is that I didn’t make a beautiful, video-worthy cake this week. It was definitely not winning any beauty contests. The good news, though, is it tasted pretty darn good, and despite being tough to frost, it actually came together really quickly.
The recipe I used came from the blog “Oh, Bite It!” You can find the original post at https://www.ohbiteit.com/2014/03/inside-out-reeses-peanut-butter-cake.html. I didn’t adjust any of the ingredients, because this was incredibly easy, but I will give you some ideas on how to better frost this cake in my version below.
Reese’s Cake
Ingredients
- 1 chocolate cake mix and ingredients from package
- 2 cups creamy peanut butter
- 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Prepare your cake mix in two eight-inch, round cake pans, according to the package directions. Set them aside to cool.
- In a glass mixing bowl, beat the peanut butter, powdered sugar and salt until it is fluffy and well combined.
- Pop the bowl into the microwave for a few seconds (start with 20) to thin the frosting out a bit before frosting your cake.
- Place one of your cakes onto a plate and slather a thin layer of frosting on top. Top with the other cake and cover the whole layer cake to your liking with the rest of the frosting. If it’s still difficult to work with, microwave it just a bit more. Just be careful not to make it so runny that you have the opposite problem to thick frosting.
- Serve your cake immediately or store in an airtight container.
This really was tasty. I used a devil’s food mix, but I also could have easily just used my from-scratch chocolate dump cake recipe that I love, if I wanted to.
At our family dinner, my four-year-old niece informed me that she only wanted to eat the frosting. Considering the amount of candy I watched her eat that afternoon, I don’t think leaving the cake on her plate was a bad decision.
But I must admit I was a little grumpy as I watched her scrape all of my hard-fought icing off of the cake. “If only she knew what I went through to get that on there,” I thought.
But then I remembered she’s four. You don’t get much sympathy from a four year old.
This piece first appeared in print on April 28, 2022.
Spice Up Your Life is a weekly newspaper column written by Lindsey Young in south central Kansas. If you are interested in sponsoring this column, please contact us through the “Contact Lindsey” link at the top of the page.
