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Chocolate-Frosted Peanut Butter Cake

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Peaches 'n' cream, sausage 'n' mustard, peanut butter 'n' chocolate. Some food marriages will never split up. Peanutty, with orange juice and buttermilk in the batter,this rich, old-fashioned soul-food cake is adapted from a recipe credited to Ruth Gaskin of Alexandria, VA. The frosting is adapted from a 1966 recipe by Lucinda Larsen. I'm reviving both here for all the peanut-butter lovin' men in my life—you know who you are!

Makes one, two-layer 9-inch cake
Ingredients
  • 2 cups plus 2 Tbsp cake flour
  • ¾ tsp baking soda
  • ¾ tsp salt
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1/3 cup softened butter
  • 1/3 cup natural, smooth peanut butter
  • 1 1/3 cups granulated sugar
  • 2 large eggs
  • 2/3 cup buttermilk, room temperature
  • 1/3 cup fresh-squeezed orange juice, room temperature
Never Fail Chocolate Frosting Ingredients
  • 1 ½ lbs powdered sugar
  • 3 Tbsp vegetable shortening
  • 3 Tbsp butter
  • ¼ tsp salt
  • 8 tbsp cream, divided
  • 3 squares unsweetened baking chocolate
  • 1 tsp vanilla
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 350. Grease and line two 9-inch cake pans with waxed paper circles you've cut out. Grease the waxed paper.
  2. Onto a large sheet of waxed paper, sift flour. Measure. Sift with soda, salt and baking powder. Sift four more times.
  3. Combine peanut butter and butter until smooth. In mixing bowl of stand mixer, cream in sugar and beat in eggs, one at at time, until smooth and fluffy. Combine orange juice with buttermilk. At low speed, alternate adding flour and OJ/buttermilk mixture, in four portions, beginning and ending with the flour. Beat until smooth after each addition. Pour into prepared pans and bake 25 to 30 minutes. Cool cake.
  4. While cake is cooling, make Never Fail Chocolate Frosting.
  5. In mixer bowl of stand mixer with paddle attachment, place, but do not yet mix, powdered sugar, shortening, butter and salt.
  6. In microwave melt chocolate. Combine with ½ of the cream
  7. Mix chocolate/cream mixture into the sugar/shortening mixture. Add vanilla. Beat on low to incorporate. Beat on high for several minutes, adding remaining cream as needed and whipping until frosting has a smooth consistency and nice sheen.

This cake seems more tender the day after you make it. Store carefully in a cake-keeper. Enjoy with tall, cold glasses of milk.

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