Adventures in Baking: Toffee Layer Cake with Peanut Butter Frosting

As most of you probably know already, I am no longer in Deutschland. It was a FANTASTIC year that will be hard to beat, but there are benefits to being home as well.

One of those benefits? A fully stocked kitchen, and all of the food is MINE (okay, technically my family's and not solely mine, but the point still stands: none of the food is labeled and I can touch ALL OF IT). Can you tell I'm excited? I've been itching to bake, but didn't really get around to it much in Germany because most of the baking ingredients in the house belonged to somebody else and I was too lazy (slash didn't want to spend the money) to buy all the necessary ingredients for delicacies such as layer cake.

So now, a few short days after returning home, I have finally broken out the oven mits, measuring cups, and washcloths (because I get flour everywhere, without fail). Never before has home sweet home been so literal.

However, I didn't want to do any ordinary baking... too boring. So I decided to be experimental, which is always dangerous since cake-making is really just chemistry, and any fiddling with the pre-approved ingredients and measurements can lead to some disastrous results. But if there's anything I learned this year, it's if you and some friends get in a car with a random Irishman to escape from the cold and not wait for a taxi, he may take you to his family's old farmhouse and let you hold a day-old lamb.

By which I mean if you do something a little risky and out of the ordinary, you may get something even better than you expected

So, long story short, I changed a few details of a basic cake recipe with mixed results. Some changes were out of a desire for experimentation, some were out of necessity (read: some brown sugar instead of exclusively white). Without further ado, I present to you my recipe for toffee cake with peanut butter frosting (needs a catchier name... suggestions are welcome in the comments).

Ingredients
Cake
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 cups low-fat vanilla yogurt (replacement for oil)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon*
1/2 cup toffee bits*

                                            *these ingredients I just threw in the batter until it looked like a sufficient amount. I didn't think to measure them until later, sadly, so these measurements are just educated guesses.

Frosting
2 tablespoons peanut butter (creamy, though crunchy would also be an interesting choice)
3 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup vanilla soymilk (regular milk will do just fine; I just like the flavor that vanilla soymilk gives to frosting)
1 stick (8 teaspoons) butter


Directions (Cake)

1.  Preheat the oven to 350. Trust me, you'll want to do this first. I always forget and then have to wait for the oven to heat up with nothing else to do as far as cake-making goes.
2. Put all of the cake ingredients in mixer. Mix until smooth. 
3. Pour the cake batter into two pre-greased 9 inch cake pans. 
4. Bake for 30 minutes*

           *I had some difficulty here with the top baking too quickly compared to the rest of the cake (probably because of the sugar in the yogurt, which I didn't take into account). I would tell you how to fix this problem if I knew how (suggestions?). To avoid it, substitute more tried and true ingredients such as apple sauce or oil for the yogurt.


Directions (Frosting)

1. Put all the frosting ingredients in mixer.
2. Mix until smooth.

A note about the frosting: the measurement of 1/4 cup milk does not need to be exact; it really depends on what you want the consistency of the frosting to be. Feel free to include more or less.

Super smooth frosting... mmmmm.

 Another note: if you want a subtler peanut butter taste, try one tablespoon instead of two. A little goes a surprisingly long way.

Put a nice big glob on the first layer as "glue" between the two layers.

Spread like so

Add the next layer, frost, and sprinkle some toffee bits on top for good measure. Voila!

Please pardon this cake... as an experiment it sinks a little in the middle... I've made prettier ones, I swear.

The end result is a dense, spongy cake and not-too-sweet frosting. Success!