Women's Weekly Chocolate Cake with Peanut Butter Frosting

I've been out and about lately and haven't had time to try new recipes so it was an absolutely treat when Mum and Dad made a cake yesterday. I quickly gobbled up dinner so I can eat a piece (or two) of this cake! It was deeelicious and truly evil!

Since we enjoyed the Passionfruit Madeira cake, my parents decided to make another cake from Women's Weekly Cakebaking cook book. This cake is light and moist, and the peanut butter frosting is a welcomed addition. Since Dad is great at DIY and frosting is pretty much like plastering, the cake turned out looking neat and even.

The original recipe calls for 150g of peanut brittle and 2 cups of nutty caramel popcorn but my parents did not include this.

Cake

• 185g (6 ounce) butter
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup (50g) cocoa powder
• 1/2 cup (125ml) boiling water
• 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups (330g) caster sugar
• 1 1/2 cup (225g) self raising flour
• 1/2 cup (75g) plain flour
• 3/4 cup (180ml) buttermilk

Peanut butter frosting

• 125g (4 ounces) butter
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups (240g) icing sugar
• 2/3 cup (190g) peanut butter
• 2 tablespoon  milk

1. Preheat oven to 160*C/325*F. Grease 22cm square cake pan and line with baking paper.

2. Blend cocoa with water in small heatproof bowl until smooth and allow to cool (10 minutes).

3. Beat butter, extract and sugar in small bowl with electric mixer until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time, then beat in cocoa mixture. Transfer mixture to large bowl; stir in sifted flours and buttermilk, in two batches.

4. Spread mixture into pan. Bake cake about 55 minutes. Stand cake in pan 5 minutes before turning, top side up, onto wire rack to cool.

5. To make the frosting, beat butter, extract in small bowl with electric mixer until as white as possible. Gradually beat in sifted icing sugar, then peanut butter add milk; beat until smooth.

6. Spread frosting on the cake and avoid the temptation to eat any. If desired, coarsely chop peanut brittle and sprinkle brittle and popcorn over cake.

Serves 16 (...or 3 people who really like cake and will eat it within 2 days. We gave 1/4 of the cake to our neighbour so we didn't eat all of it!)

Cake can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for 3 days, or in the freezer (without frosting) for 2 months.