Peanut Butter Birthday Cake

This is a delicious cake with excellent peanut butter flavour; it’s also light and airy for a butter cake, though a touch dry, and not too sweet.

The standard creaming method is used to make the batter. I prepared the pans according to the recipe, which didn’t call for parchment paper or cake strips; the cakes released easily from the pans but they did dome and crack so the cake strips would be a good idea for next time. I didn’t bother trimming the cakes, just inverted the top one so I had a level surface.

I made a half recipe and baked it in 6” pans and paired it with milk chocolate buttercream leftover from this project. The combination worked very well but the peanut butter flavour of the cake would hold up against a more intensely flavoured chocolate buttercream also. The author suggests some of her own frosting recipes - chocolate, peanut butter or cream cheese – I’m sure all of them would be great with the cake.

I didn't make this for anyone's birthday, but my son's already put in a request for his!

edit to add: Made a 9" layer cake for my son's birthday. I used cake strips and the layers were perfectly level. This cake seemed more moist than the 6". I used Joanne Chang's chocolate ganache frosting and Bouchon's peanut butter buttercream.