RHC: Spice Cake with Peanut Buttercream Frosting

Last weekend was another 2-cake weekend. My 10-year-old nephew was on spring break and wanted to bake the Spice Cake with Peanut Buttercream Frosting, which he'd spotted it on my list of "cakes Marie made before the bake-along started" (it was actually the cake Marie started with). He's a big spice cake fan. As I'd already baked the banana cake Thursday night, he came over on Friday afternoon and we baked the spice cake.

The combination of peanut butter and spice cake sounded odd, but I was willing to give it a try. I did resist the nephew's urging to add more spices, cautioning that the tastes of the cake and the frosting might be carefully balanced so perhaps we should go with the 1/2 tsp of cinnamon and 1/4 tsp of cloves, and see how it came out.


I let my nephew take the lead, and he handled most of the cake and the frosting. The cake mixed up easily in the KitchenAid, and baked up beautifully brown and flat-topped, with only a few air bubbles that I didn't get out of the batter. The peanut butter-cream cheese frosting was smooth and very peanutty, and come together in an instant in the food processor. I'm trying to decide if I prefer it or the peanut butter frosting from the fabulous Chocolate-Peanut Butter cake from Sky High (via Smitten Kitchen), but memory confuses the two--perhaps I'll have to have a direct taste comparison one of these days. I may also try Rose's version with the substitution I did for my last birthday cake, using almond butter instead of peanut butter for a much subtler frosting.

Verdict on this one: it's....unusual. The spice cake is very nice. So is the peanut buttercream. The combination does work together, but I'm not sure I want to make it again. I think I want the peanut buttercream with a chocolate cake (overdone, I know, see above) and the spice cake with a nice cream-cheese frosting with perhaps a hint of lemon or orange. The cake wasn't quite moist enough for me to try it without any frosting at all. Oh, and the nephew who started it all found the peanut butter too overwhelming, and abandoned his piece half-eaten. Oh, well....