I tried to make this beautiful cake…

remember that lovely chocolate peanut butter cake which is Smitten Kitchen’s most popular recipe?

Go here to look at her beautiful beautiful cake before reading further.

I mean really her cake makes me want to sing and eat and eat some more.  I love me some chocolate and peanut butter.  I also have hungry eyes..are you singing yet?

So I pulled the ingredients together over a month’s time buying what I could find or pay for week by week.

And I made the cake- the chocolate sour cream, peanut butter cream cheese, chocolate ganache-y cake.

At first it seemed to go well.  My brand new soft silicone  baking pans worked very well.  And all smelled well and looked well…

Good so Far

 

Third Layer

A little bit of crumbly pieces but I thought I was ready for the crumb layer.  You know the thin layer of frosting that catches the crumbs and looks terrible but then you cover up with the real layer that looks lovely like Smitten Kitchen’s very own version.

But then the crumb layer didn’t come together.  I don’t know if the peanut butter frosting was too sticky or my cake was too warm or I wasn’t patient enough.  It was probably all three.  But instead of panicking or even getting ready to lose everything like Laura Brown from Michael Cunningham’s fantastic book, The Hours who contemplated suicide after making a not so beautiful cake, I just let it be.

Be.  Be what it was going to be. 

Be This…

And here’s another view in case you missed it…

Houston, we have a problem.  It looks like I smeared the frosting on with a four year old boy with ADHD’s help.  But no, I used a knife.  And the above is what happened.

So I went ahead with it.  Time for the ganache.  Excited yet?

Which was a bit too runny or hot or whatever and went everywhere, even here…

After all my hard hard time consuming work I had to try some.  And then I decided I should hold some aside for my co-workers to try too.  So I cut off half the cake and put the now falling apart chunks into separate containers where they looked like something absolutely disgusting.

And then, not having spare room in my fridge or a nice cake holder I left the rest out on the counter.

Only to wake up to this the next morning…

And see the leaning tower of peanut butter.  I have titled that last one: Triumph of the Cake Over the Cook.

But, as crappy as this cake looks (and I do mean that literally) it was one of the most delicious things I have baked in at least five years.