Cake #15 Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake with Cream Cheese Icing

I actually made this cake after the #16 cake, which I will eventually post.  Not really relevant unless you are a historian and all. So this cake has been among the most anticipated of all the cakes in the list.  It hits on so many sweet spots.  It is covered in cream cheese frosting.  It is topped with butter fingers for heaven's sake!  I made it for my folks when they came to visit and for a belated birthday cake for my mom- for which we never sang (sorry Mom!  Happy Birthday!).  

And - what did we think of it?  YUM!  And OMG, just too darn big.  Really, I am going to throw in the towel on these triple decker cakes.  Come on!  I cannot slice them.  They are too big for my dessert plates.  I cannot store or transport them in any appealing fashion - which is a shame for my colleagues who look forward to the cake run-off.  This is very unfortunate since I was just in NYC and bought 1 more 8" and 1 more 9" round cake pans from Dean & Deluca so that I now have 3 of each. Purchased in part to satisfy my need to buy something from that store, a useful souvenir from the city, and so I would not have to rig up cake solutions.  But now, with all these cake pans here, I am really not interested in another 3 layer cake - even after I gave Mindy the business about not sticking to the recipes.  OH!  And I did not even mention my biggest reason:  the frosting ratio.  I had a very interesting conversation at a business dinner with a man who was shocked that my preferred frosting ratio to cake is about 1:1.  With the triple layer cakes, my frosting around the exterior has been so thin, the whole cake is just a disappointment to me.  This one was no exception.  

The crumb part of the cake was amazing:  moist, held together well for frosting.
The cream cheese frosting was maybe the best I have had.  I have a go-to recipe that is good, which I will stick to.  This one is great (a little on the slippery side), but it takes more effort since you have to make whipped cream and fold it in.  I'll use this one when we need to really impress.
The chocolate peanut butter middle layer was fantastic...and when I was frosting the cakes and accidentally got the cream cheese in the chocolate frosting, and licked it off the spoon, it was AMAZING.  I think this could be a hybrid frosting, just mix the two for a light chocolate brown color and use it like that. 


I was going to skip the Butterfingers in favor of peanut butter cups, but I am so glad I did not.  The butterfingers really crumbled into flakes, that could easily dissolve, so it was a great flavor combo and not the texture nightmare I thought it would be

So, this is what 1 LB of brown sugarr looks like before it goes into a cake.

So I thought I was a genius until I realized I needed to whip the cream all the way, so should not have put it in the measuring cup.  In my forever quest to minimize dishes (no laughing Ben), I was glad our 50s beater fit in the cup.  Then I needed it cold, so my cup fit right in the icy bowl - it worked out, but I should have used a bigger bowl.  

Did I mention the slippery?  This is not supposed to be a parallelogram.  The longer I let it rest there, the more it just slid over on its own.  And there was a frosting caution.  The middle chocolate layers are dark chocolatey colored and I pushed mine right to the edge - which was a problem when i had to apply a thin layer of white frosting to the exterior.  It resulted in a smeary chocolate/white exterior ... and the revelation that man the frosting combo was GOOD.  

Ok, so I threw some peanut butter cups on top too - but they were not needed.  Maybe 3 butterfingers instead of 2 would be better --- it still looked like less than the picture.

And see how thin the white frosting is around the outside?  Totally unacceptable for me.

I would make this again:  2 Layers and definitely stick with Butterfingers.