Aunt Joyce's Chocolate Cake with Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Frosting

June 13, 2009

Who would have thought to add mayonnaise to a cake batter recipe?

My friend Carla once told me that she suspected the condiment would add great moisture to a cake. Feeling curious, I decided to test her theory. I also challenged myself to decorate a fancy two layer cake, as it had been a while since I’d made any pretty desserts.

I found this recipe for Aunt Joyce’s Chocolate Cake and decided to give it a whirl. In the end it produced a moist and luscious cake that wasn’t at all greasy as you might expect. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of looking at the calorie count on the side of the mayonnaise jar. This recipe uses a whole cup of it. Eep! Shield your eyes should you decide to make this. Ignorance is bliss, my friends. The cake is seriously delicious and that’s all you need to know.

The only downside is that it’s so soft and moist that it sticks to everything including knives, spatulas and your fingers. This being the case, it was quite tricky to decorate without becoming a total mess. Though the finished product didn’t quite resemble something you’d see on Cake Boss, it came out pretty by my standards and looked quite impressive considering how unruly the cake was.

A few decorating tips: Grease your knives or spatulas before trying to remove the cake from the pan or cut it into layers. You should also apply a crumb coating when you ice it so that the cake crumbs don’t get mixed into your pretty layer of icing.

On the other hand, if you don’t feel like being so meticulous, just douse hunks of it with chocolate peanut butter sauce and whipped cream and call it a day. The easy way out would still produce a mouthwatering dessert.

Get the recipe for Aunt Joyce’s Chocolate cake at Allrecipes. If you want to replicate my version, cover it with peanut butter cream cheese frosting (recipe below). I decorated my cake with whole and crushed chocolate wafers, peanut butter chips and another frosting I made using Izzybelle Chocolate Peanut Butter Sauce. I’d give you the recipe for that too, but I just added milk and powdered sugar to it until I had the consistency I was looking for. You could probably do this with any store-bought sauce - just add the sugar and milk and mix until you think you can pipe it.

Take a (short) break from cupcakes and challenge yourself to build a pretty chocolate peanut butter cake!