Cake

Fudgy chocolate cake layered with rich peanut butter frosting and peanut butter cups make this an excellent cake to share with a crowd.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Cake Recipe

Fudgy chocolate cake layered with rich peanut butter frosting, peanut butter cups, and a rich peanut butter chocolate ganache make this an excellent cake to share with a crowd.

Fudgy chocolate cake layered with rich peanut butter frosting and peanut butter cups make this an excellent cake to share with a crowd.

Happy Thursday!

I’ve been saving a good one for my peanut butter and chocolate trifecta finale. Things may have started out a little more conservatively with this Super Skinny Peanut Butter Cup Smoothie, but we are definitely finishing on a wild note! Because there is nothing mild or tame about this two-layer chocolate fudge peanut butter cup beauty!

Fudgy chocolate cake layered with rich peanut butter frosting and peanut butter cups make this an excellent cake to share with a crowd.

This may look like a simple 2-layer cake at first glance. But what you’re really seeing here are actually nine layers of peanut butter chocolate-y goodness. Count them with me:

???????? my all-time favorite chocolate cake.

???????? homemade peanut butter frosting.

???????? Reese’s peanut butter cups.

???????? more chocolate cake.

???????? more peanut butter frosting.

???????? peanut butter chocolate ganache.

???????? more peanut butter frosting.

???????? more peanut butter chocolate ganache.

???????? MORE Reese’s cups!

Fudgy chocolate cake layered with rich peanut butter frosting and peanut butter cups make this an excellent cake to share with a crowd.

See those Reese’s cups in the middle?

That’s my favorite part. You know I’m all about the texture, and those little bits of Reese’s give the middle of this cake a perfect little something extra to bite into.

Fudgy chocolate cake layered with rich peanut butter frosting and peanut butter cups make this an excellent cake to share with a crowd.

Fudgy chocolate cake layered with rich peanut butter frosting and peanut butter cups make this an excellent cake to share with a crowd.

What are you waiting for?! It’s practically the weekend– dig in!

Cococnut Cake | www.somethingswanky.com

Coconut Cake Recipe

My favorite doctored up cake mix combined with my favorite from-scratch coconut buttercream. I love that this cake is both beautiful and simple.

Cococnut Cake | somethingswanky.com

Originally posted in May 2014.

I thought it would be fun to celebrate this Mother’s day by spending this whole week posting the favorite dessert recipes of all of the mothers in my life! Starting with my Grandma.

I’ve posted some of her recipes on here before. Check out this Red Velvet Cake and these Monster Cookies. Those are hers and two of my very favorite recipes.

Cococnut Cake | somethingswanky.com

My Grandma is one of my heroes– both in the kitchen and out. She is genuine and kind and has always been such a great support to me. I am so thankful to have her in my life, and to really have her. She’s always taken a real interest in the things that are important to me and has been so encouraging of my pursuits.

She has been such an important and permanent influence in my life…. as have her baked goods. So many of my memories of time with my Grandma revolve around holiday baking. I loved (and I still do) sitting at her counter, watching her work, and just talking.

Whilst eating Monster Cookies of course 😉

Cococnut Cake | somethingswanky.com

Grandma says she likes coconut cake best, so here we are today with a super easy and yummy coconut cake. Perfect for summer! It’s simply my favorite doctored up cake mix (seriously, you can’t beat this recipe), and my favorite coconut buttercream. I love the layers on this cake too– just like the rest of it, they’re both beautiful and simple.

Plus, my grandma is the queen of layered cakes. If she were making this, it would have at least 6 layers. Maybe I’ll get there one day, but for now I’m settling for a measly four layers ;).

This old fashioned chocolate cake was one of the first from-scratch cakes I ever made. It's super moist and has a rich chocolate flavor. Top it with chocolate ganache or this yummy 1-minute frosting!

Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake Recipe

This old fashioned chocolate cake was one of the first from-scratch cakes I ever made. It’s super moist and has a rich chocolate flavor. Top it with chocolate ganache or this yummy 1-minute frosting!

This old fashioned chocolate cake was one of the first from-scratch cakes I ever made. It's super moist and has a rich chocolate flavor. Top it with chocolate ganache or this yummy 1-minute frosting!

You guys want to hear something CRAZY?

I first published this recipe 6 years ago to the day! As you know, I’ve been updating recipes and photos for quite some time (I’ve been moving like a turtle on this project). I actually baked and shot this cake last week, and when I sat down at the computer tonight to write the post, I totally geeked out when I saw “Published: April 21, 2011.”

I’m sure I’m the only one getting excited over this, but it felt serendipitous and I just had to share ????.

This old fashioned chocolate cake was one of the first from-scratch cakes I ever made. It's super moist and has a rich chocolate flavor. Top it with chocolate ganache or this yummy 1-minute frosting!

SIX YEARS! I still can’t believe it’s been that long since I posted this recipe– or since I started blogging, for that matter. I’m not really one of those bloggers that has an exact date for my first post and celebrates a blog birthday or anything. I mean, I totally would if I could! But I think I deleted and re-published my first post about 14 million times, so I had totally lost any concept of my “start date” by the time I realized celebrating your “blogiversary” was a thing.

So basically, I just have a vague recollection of some of my very first posts, and I know for sure this was one of them! Which makes it extra special to me.

This old fashioned chocolate cake was one of the first from-scratch cakes I ever made. It's super moist and has a rich chocolate flavor. Top it with chocolate ganache or this yummy 1-minute frosting!

This batter is THICK. And all kinds of amazing.

Thanks to two large eggs and 2/3 cup of sour cream, it’s an incredibly rich and moist cake as long as you don’t overbake it. What’s overbaking it look like? A totally clean toothpick is overbaked. That’s not to say you want a ton of batter sticking to the toothpick when you test it, but if a little bit of moist cake is still sticking to it– you know it’s perfect.

This old fashioned chocolate cake was one of the first from-scratch cakes I ever made. It's super moist and has a rich chocolate flavor. Top it with chocolate ganache or this yummy 1-minute frosting!

You could go a couple of different routes with the frosting. Chocolate ganache is a solid option, obviously. And my all-time favorite Chocolate Frosting is another great way to go. And this glaze is quick and easy and would look stunning!

The day that I made this cake for photographing, my brain was stuck on a one-minute fudge frosting I had seen on Pinterest. So that’s what I did and that’s the recipe I’m including for you today. But seriously, the sky is the limit with the frosting, so don’t feel limited to what I did here!

Not that I want to scare you away from this one-minute frosting. It was pretty awesome, and I’m glad I tried it! It turns into an almost fudge-like state when it cools and firms up quite a bit. Yum!

This old fashioned chocolate cake was one of the first from-scratch cakes I ever made. It's super moist and has a rich chocolate flavor. Top it with chocolate ganache or this yummy 1-minute frosting!

???? And trust me, you’ll definitely want a glass of milk to go with this recipe. Enjoy!

An unbelievably easy and delicious cake that tastes like your favorite peanut butter and chocolate Girl Scout Tagalong Cookies. Only three ingredients!

Tagalong Pound Cake Recipe

 An unbelievably easy and delicious cake that tastes like your favorite peanut butter and chocolate Girl Scout Tagalong Cookies. Only three ingredients!

An unbelievably easy and delicious cake that tastes like your favorite peanut butter and chocolate Girl Scout Tagalong Cookies. Only three ingredients!

There are three very important things happening in this uberly (it’s a word. shut up.) delicious cake.

☝????Pound cake. Easy, Sara Lee, ALWAYS GOOD and always easy ???? pound cake.

✌???? Peanut butter. And I don’t mean peanut butter that’s been diluted with sugar or whipped cream or something. I mean PEANUT BUTTER. In all of it’s creamy glory. The way the Girl Scouts intended it to be.

✌????☝???? (why isn’t there an emjoi for three??) Chocolate. Duh.

An unbelievably easy and delicious cake that tastes like your favorite peanut butter and chocolate Girl Scout Tagalong Cookies. Only three ingredients!

Step number one: buy a Sara Lee pound cake out of the frozen section. I’m not even going to bother arguing with the make-it-from-scratch crowd here. Trust me. It’s just as good if not better than a homemade pound cake for this particular recipe.

I rest my case.

Step number two: smother it in creamy, creamy peanut butter.

Step number three: Freeze it. Really about 30 minutes ought to do the trick. We just don’t want it to melt when we pour the chocolate over it.

An unbelievably easy and delicious cake that tastes like your favorite peanut butter and chocolate Girl Scout Tagalong Cookies. Only three ingredients!

Are you ready for this step?

Canned frosting. Mmm-hm. I’m not even embarrassed. Homemade frosting has it’s place. Like on this cake. But half a can of melted Pillsbury Milk Chocolate frosting works like a dream for this recipe.

Plus… mama likey easy.

An unbelievably easy and delicious cake that tastes like your favorite peanut butter and chocolate Girl Scout Tagalong Cookies. Only three ingredients!

An unbelievably easy and delicious cake that tastes like your favorite peanut butter and chocolate Girl Scout Tagalong Cookies. Only three ingredients!

So, to sum up:

Cake. Peanut butter. Chocolate frosting.

Crazy stupid easy.

Crazy stupid good.

Yep, I think that about covers everything.

An unbelievably easy and delicious cake that tastes like your favorite peanut butter and chocolate Girl Scout Tagalong Cookies. Only three ingredients!

Enjoy my dears!

Incredibly moist banana cake with chocolate glaze.

Chocolate Glazed Banana Bundt Cake Recipe

Incredibly moist banana bundt cake recipe with a sneakily easy chocolate glaze.

Incredibly moist banana cake with chocolate glaze.

You know what I’d rather do than watch my husband try to do homework with my first grader? (because o.m.g. it’s like having TWO first graders who won’t stop arguing with each other)

So, yeah. Pretty much anything else would be good.

But this banana bundt cake recipe — and licking that big puddle of chocolate glaze off the plate — would be pretty high up on my list.

Incredibly moist banana cake with a sneakily easy chocolate glaze.

Two things really surprised me about this recipe. And not because one or the other, but because both things are going on here.

One. This cake is supremely soft and moist. Like, crumbs-that-stick-to-your-fork moist. Which I’d typically expect from a banana cake. Except for–

Two. It baked into a fabulously sturdy bundt cake. In my experience, bundt cakes that hold up really well aren’t always high up on the soft, fluffy, and moist scale. Maybe they’re moist. But never quite as tender and fluffy as this cake is on the inside.

🍌🍌🍌 CELEBRATE BANANAS with us: our favorite Banana Bread Recipes 🍌🍌🍌

Basically, this is the superhero of bundt cakes. And banana cakes. It’s the superhero of all cakes.

Incredibly moist banana cake with a sneakily easy chocolate glaze.

And that Banana Bundt Cake recipe glaze…

Also, that chocolate glaze. ????????

And want to hear my dirty little secret about that? It’s store bought frosting. YES. IT. IS.

Listen. I have really solid, fool proof, fantabulous chocolate ganache recipe right here that would work perfectly for this cake. And if you want to go the all homemade route, please! Be my guest!

But if you’re running short on time (who isn’t?), melting down about half of a can of Pillsbury Milk Chocolate frosting to pour over this cake is an excellent option. It tastes delicious, and it pours beautifully. Plus, it takes about 30 seconds and is virtually mess-free. You won’t be sad if that’s the way you go, I promise.

Incredibly moist banana cake with a sneakily easy chocolate glaze.

No matter how you slice it, it’s always better than watching my husband attempt homework with a first grader. ????

Yellow Birthday Cake with Creamy Chocolate Frosting Recipe

This is the perfect birthday cake recipe! Buttery golden yellow cake with creamy, fudgy chocolate frosting. And lots of sprinkles, of course!

This is the perfect birthday cake recipe! Buttery golden yellow cake with creamy, fudgy chocolate frosting.

I’ve mentioned before that I don’t do birthday cakes.

I don’t make my husband’s birthday cakes. I don’t make my kids’ birthday cakes. And I don’t make my own birthday cakes. It’s a very firm personal policy that I established a few years back.

Why? It’s just too much unnecessary stress. And I can’t emphasize the unnecessary part enough. I mean, between planning a party, buy and wrapping gifts, and setting up the whole DAY in general, whyyyyyyyyyyy go through the ordeal of making a cake too? After enough birthdays of ending up grouchy and tired in a sticky, messy kitchen, I decided to abandon the practice of birthday cake-making altogether. I’d rather spend the day in celebration and eat a delicious cake from one of my favorite bakeries.

If you ask me, there’s absolutely no shame in that (especially when I’m baking cakes nearly every other day of the year!).

But, back when I used to make birthday cakes for myself, this is what I would make. A perfect, simple yellow cake with glorious fudgy frosting and a ridiculous amount of sprinkles! It’s everything that a birthday cake should be!

This is the perfect birthday cake recipe! Buttery golden yellow cake with creamy, fudgy chocolate frosting.

When I was in college, we’d make this cake on each roommate’s birthday. But we used a box cake and store-bought frosting and pink crystal sprinkles.

This is my grown up version of that.

Moist and tender, butter yellow cake made extra soft by using whole milk and incorporating sour cream into the batter (is there anything not made better by sour cream??). It’s thick and puffy, and crazy delicious.

The coup de gras of this cake, however, is the chocolate frosting on top. I took my favorite chocolate fudge frosting and made one teensy-weensy, but oh-so-significant alteration… I omitted 3/4 cups of the powdered sugar from the recipe.

What does that mean?

It means that we’re taking out just enough powdered sugar to make this frosting extra creamy by increasing the ratio of fat to dry ingredients. You wouldn’t want to frost a free-standing cake with this frosting, because it wouldn’t firm up well enough to stay where you put it. But if you’re frosting a sheet cake? That’s a different story! It’s the perfect vessel for all that creamy, indulgent goodness.

This is the perfect birthday cake recipe! Buttery golden yellow cake with creamy, fudgy chocolate frosting.

This rich, indulgent, fudgy frosting is the perfect compliment to that buttery yellow cake underneath. The only thing that could make it any better?

SPRINKLES. And lots of them. So don’t forget to add plenty of those!

And hey– Happy Birthday 🙂

Single Serve Chocolate Molten Lava Mug Cakes made in a minute in the microwave

Peanut Butter Chocolate Lava Mug Cake Recipe

This single serve recipe is perfect for when you need a little chocolate fix but don’t want to make an entire cake!

Single Serve Chocolate Molten Lava Mug Cakes made in a minute in the microwave

WARNING: this is where diets come to die… in a rich, fudgy pool of decadent melty chocolate and peanut butter enveloped in a thick, fluffy cake.

I’m just saying.

Single Serve Chocolate Molten Lava Mug Cakes made in a minute in the microwave

Sometimes you just need chocolate cake rightnowrightnow. Right?

And when that craving strikes, you don’t want spend the time (and dirty dishes) slaving away over a full sized cake. And you really don’t want an entire cake sitting around, tempting you for days after the craving has passed (because, omg, I can eat an entire chocolate cake in one afternoon without even really wanting to– please tell me that’s not just me?!).

Enter: mug cakes. They are simple and easy, warm and fresh, and they’re ready RIGHT NOW.

It’s brilliant.

Single Serve Chocolate Molten Lava Mug Cakes made in a minute in the microwave

These little cakes are a little different from typical molten lava cakes. Because instead of slightly underbaking the cakes to create the lava center, I’m actually adding a brick of chocolate and a teaspoon of creamy peanut butter (!!!!!) to get all warm and melty in the center of this cake.

I prefer this method over the underbaking for a couple of reasons.

One, for some reason the uncooked cake batter “lava” has always kind of weirded me out. I don’t know why– it’s not like I don’t lick the bowl after I make a cake! But something about uncooked batter masquerading as melted chocolate… it just never seemed right to me. So there’s that.

Second of all… since we are microwaving these cakes rather than baking them, the heating method is kind of wonky. We’re dealing with cooking time in terms of seconds rather than minutes, so it’s nearly impossible to be as precise as we would need to be in underbaking the cake the exactly right amount of time. By using actual chocolate in the center, we eliminate the headache of trying to figure out how to keep the center unbaked while nuking the rest of the cake just enough. Fabulous.

Single Serve Chocolate Molten Lava Mug Cakes made in a minute in the microwave

I desperately wish that I had some ice cream on hand when I was photographing this. Wouldn’t a big scoop of vanilla plopped in this warm mug of melted chocolate and peanut butter just be divine?

All I had at the time was whipped cream, and that was pretty good too 🙂

Just a few simple ingredients and about 60 seconds is all you have standing between you and this cake. Enjoy!!

Chocolate Wasted Cake

Chocolate Wasted Cake Recipe

This cake is not for the faint of heart! Sinfully fudgy and moist on the inside and recklessly covered in chocolate on the outside, topped with Snickers candy bars, Reese’s Cups, sea salt caramel filled chocolates, dark chocolate ganache, and a semisweet chocolate drizzle. 
Chocolate Wasted Cake

This cake is not subtle. No siree. It slaps you in the face with more chocolate than you ever knew could be in one cake, from the inside out!

You can’t see it yet, but the inside of the cake is actually the best part. I’m putting the cart before the horse there though. I think before we get to that, we’d better talk about the outside first. I mean, how could we not??

Just look at this monstrosity!! Snickers candy bars, Reese’s cups, sea salt caramel filled chocolates, dark chocolate ganache and a semisweet drizzle are all piled high on top with my favorite Guittard milk chocolate chips covering the rest of the cake.

I mean… there just are no words for this level of chocolate-iness.

Let’s talk method for a minute: it may look like one big mess just thrown together, but it actually does require a certain level of technique to get things to stay put. Those chocolate chips on the side are tricky little boogers. Here’s what worked for me:

  • add a little more powdered sugar to the remaining frosting after you’ve layered frosting in the middle of the cake. I’ll discuss this more in a second, but the filling frosting is meant to be a little soft, so it doesn’t hold the chocolate chips as well on the outside.
  • pile the chocolate chips up the side of the cake and press in– I used plastic gloves, so that I didn’t get chocolate all over my hands. This part is a bit messy.
  • this step is hard to describe, and it’s not 100% necessary, but I felt like it was helpful– fold parchment paper into a long strip about the same height as the cake. Wrap the strip around like cake like a tube, and gently tie a piece of bakers string around it to hold it in place. This allows you to do a little more pressing through the parchment paper without making a mess, and it secures all the chocolate chips onto the cake while the frosting does a little bit of hardening (not like hard hard, but just the little bit that powdered sugar causes in frosting). Keep the parchment on there until ready to serve.

Chocolate Wasted Cake

Ok, so let’s talk about the inside of this cake! SO GOOD!

It’s my very favorite chocolate cake recipe that starts with a cake mix and is made incredibly moist by adding pudding and sour cream. Add to that my very favorite fudgy chocolate frosting, which I’ve thinned ever so slightly by adding a little less powdered sugar than the recipe calls for. This really contributes to a further moistening of the cake, so that it literally just melts in your mouth.

As good as the outside of the cake it (and how it could it not be?!), the inside is really my favorite part of this whole thing. It’s really pretty incredible, and I think you are going to just die over it.

I mean, just look at this!

Chocolate Wasted Cake

By the way… you can use any chocolate candy you would like on the top. I personally think M&Ms and Oreos would be amazing. But I have to say, I die over the ooey, gooey caramel that I used on this cake. I used Ghirardelli sea salt caramel filled chocolate, and I thought the caramel was the perfect thing to break up the chocolate a little bit. And it’s just visually so great as well.

This cake definitely takes a little bit of time and effort, but it’s so worth it! Enjoy 🙂

Want to comment on this cake? Visit me on Instagram and let me know what you think!

Snickerdoodle Gooey Cake Bars

Snickerdoodle Gooey Cake Recipe

If you love snickerdoodles, then you will love these gooey cake bars! Even better? All you’ll need is one bowl to make them.
Snickerdoodle Gooey Cake Bars

Gooey cake bars are seriously life changing. Have you made them before? It’s like a layer of cheesecake sitting on top of a dense cookie-like cake bar.

These bars combine the cinnamon sugar of a snickerdoodle with the grand yumminess that is a gooey cake bar– it’s genius! Annnnnnnnnnd it’s another dairy-filled recipe that I accidentally face planted into. I know. #nursingmomprobs

Snickerdoodle Gooey Cake Bars

I could make these bars over and over again. They taste amazing, and they are SO easy to make (even though they look super fancy and labor intensive, they’re really not). All you’ll need is your one stand mixer bowl, and you can make both the cake layer and they gooey layer in that same bowl with no need to wash in between! Yay for less dish-washing! Can I get an AMEN?!

I hate dishes. Like, hate hate dishes.

But back to the point: these bars.

So good. Make them. Love them. The end.

DSC_3704

Actually, not quite “the end.” What I really should have said was: make them. Love them. Buy this cookbook!

This Snickerdoodle Gooey Cake Bar recipe comes from this amazing cookbook written by my sweet friend, Jocelyn, who blogs over at Grandbaby Cakes. It is a beautiful, beautiful book written by an obviously beautiful and food-loving soul. It’s brimming with gorgeous and mouth watering cakes, like these…

DSC_3708

 

DSC_3713

 

It’s also full of sweet family photos that I just couldn’t get enough of. Like this precious one…

DSC_3712

 

And my favorite page of the whole book?

DSC_3705

Just inside the front cover. Isn’t that the sweetest thing you’ve ever seen in a cookbook? A place to write the first generation to own this book! Jocelyn’s book is full of love and great recipes, and I loved it cover to cover.

So until you get your hands on Grandbaby Cakes, the cookbook (as you must!)– here’s a recipe to tide you over 🙂

❤️