Peanut butter and jelly chocolate birthday cake...

My baby is two, and I am still dumb founded by how fast the past two years have gone. I use to laugh at people when they said to hold on to every moment because it's gone before you know it now I know what they meant. The past two years have been the biggest learning experience in my 21 years of life. I have learned to be patient, how to be a little more organized (I said a little) and how to hold on to every second. So for my little munchkins second birthday I really wanted to make a cake that represented her. So I of course knew I was going to do a chocolate cake she loves chocolate she literally drools over the stuff. However when it came to the frosting I was stumped, I mean there is a million different combination I knew she would like but I didn't want just any type of cake I wanted a Lola style cake. Then it hit me I would do Peanut butter and Jelly. She has loved Pb&J's for as long as she has ate solids heck I even craved PB&J with chocolate syrup on it when I was pregnant with her, it was meant to be. So here it is the perfect little cake for my perfect little baby.

(Excuse the picture quality on a few they were taken with my iPhone)

Rich Chocolate Cake

found via Sweetapolita

Ingredients

1 3/4 cup all purpose flour

2 cups granulated sugar

3/4 cup Cocoa powder

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

2 eggs

1 cup strong cold coffee

1 cup buttermilk, room temp

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 Tbsp vanilla extract

  For the cake above I split this recipe in half it splits really nicely which is one of the many things I love about it . Even after splitting this recipe it gave me a 4 layer 6 inch cake plus 4 very yummy cupcakes. For the coffee I usually use a flavored coffee mix that complements the frosting  but for this cake I just used plain old strong coffee but if you would like to try it I recommend a vanilla coffee mix it makes a nice difference in the cake it self.

Perfect Peanut Butter Frosting

1 stick of room temp. unsalted butter

2 cups creamy peanut butter

2 cups powdered sugar

1-2 tsp milk

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

 With a paddle attachment cream your butter till it is nice and fluffy then simply add in the remaining ingredients. If you like a nice stiff frosting you can forget about the milk however if you want a really creamy frosting I would recommend adding the milk 1/4 tsp at a time till you reach the constancy you like.

How to assemble the cake

Assembling this cake is simple. Divide the two 6 inch cake layers to make 4 place first layer on cake plate or board add a layer of peanut butter frosting then a layer of jelly repeat till all layers are on. You can skip every other layer with the jelly if you would like. Now simply frost the cake however you please. I did a nice simple smooth design with the rosettes on the bottom using a wilton 16 tip and I used the closed star tip (wilton tip 27) to do the decorations on the top. All in all it's a simple tasty cake which was perfect for my little Lola.

My little Cake Monster.

If you happen to try out this recipe/cake post a link to pics I would love to see how it turns out.