Hey! You got your peanut butter in my chocolate!

**Note, I forgot the stick of butter in the frosting recipe- the recipe has been fixed**

If I were a smart blogger, I'd post pictures. But because I forgot to take any before the cake was slaughtered, you'll have to just live with the descriptions.

Our office sort of forgot one of the director's birthdays this week. To atone for this grevious oversight, we decided to make her favorite cake for her. Specifically, a chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting. This is one of the few frostings I really groove on (the others being whipped cream frostings, a really good buttercream, and german chocolate) as I find most frostings (especially commercial ones) way too sweet.

The cake was declared "The best I've ever eaten" by the not-normally-effusive director, so I think that's a pretty good endorsement.

The recipes are as follows:

Hershey's Disappearing Cake

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter or margarine, softened
1/4 cup shortening
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup Hershey's Cocoa
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
1-3/4 cups milk

Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease the bottoms of 2 8 inch pans,toss in a trimmed parchment, grease that too, and cocoa powder the heck out of them both (cocoa powder, not flour- helps keep a white ring from forming)

In large mixer bowl, beat butter, shortening, sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy. Add eggs; beat well.

In separate bowl, stir together flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt; add alternately with milk to butter mixture, blending well. Pour batter into prepared pans. Bake 30-35 minutes or until wooden toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pans on wire rack for 10 minutes, then cool completely before frosting. Personally, I'd recommend freezing the little bastards before frosting, because they're wicked breakable, and rather crumbly when you frost, but if you're pressed for time, do a skim coat of icing, then a really thick coat on top of that, and it'll pass. (If it's really bad, press chopped peanuts into the side of the frosted cake.)

Now, for the frosting. You can totally whip this up as the cake is cooling, or whenever, really. You'll need:

2/3 pound of peanut butter (yes, you're going to have to use a scale. Sorry. That's how the recipe was written, and I didn't bother to measure it in cups.) and maybe a tad more, if it looks a bit skimpy
1 stick butter (room temperature)
1 pound of powdered sugar (plus a little more, probably)
1 cup evaporated milk (or a little less)
a tiny dab of crisco shortening if desired

Now, here's the skinny on the imprecise measurements- I wanted this to be a nice stiff frosting- so I tossed in a little extra Peanut Butter and Powdered sugar (maybe another 1/3 to 1/2 box, and another big whonkin' spoonful of peanutbutter- not a tablespoon, like a wooden spoon) and beat the bejeebus out of it with the stand mixer.

When the cake is cool, frost it, and if you're a purist, you can leave it plain. If you'd like to dress it up, you could decorate with the aforementioned ground up peanuts pressed into the sides of the frosting, chocolate curls in the center of the cake, use chocolate stars or chocolate frosting to decorate the top/sides, or decorate with more peanut butter frosting (for that matter, just make a big batch of frosting and eat that, without the cake, it's that fun).