Happy Birthday, Todd!

Happy Birthday, Todd!

Yellow cake with Chocolate Peanut Butter IMBC

(+5 skill points => 320/400)

Today my husband's family celebrated my brother-in-law's birthday.  I offered to do a cake since it was just a casual dinner at the house.  Heck, I would have offered in any situation.  I'm pleased with how this came out.  Couple of "firsts" here.

Stats:

• 8" round Duncan Hines Classic Yellow box cake mix
• iced and filled with peanut butter and chocolate IMBC
• decorated with strips of marzipan

I've been wanting to do a chocolate / peanut butter version of IMBC for a while now.  I sacrificed a milk chocolate bunny from Easter to do it.  The bunny melted down was ~2 oz. of chocolate.  I added a heaping spoonful of peanut butter and also cocoa powder to that.  The IMBC held up well with it.  The only problem was some bits of chocolate didn't get fully incorporated.  It tasted great.  Here's the middle after damming with cake spackle and filling with IMBC.

I've been waiting for a good reason to try the marzipan that my husband bought me.  I figured it would taste well with the peanut butter.  Working with it was soooo nice.  It didn't stick to my board (unlike fondant).  It didn't crack when rolled out (unlike fondant).  In little bits it was pretty dang tasty (unlike fondant).  I rolled and cut out 4" strips with varying widths.

It probably would have looked nicer if I colored the marzipan a dark brown ... oh well.  I wasn't really shooting for the prettiest looking cake.

Having a properly sized cake board is very important.  I was using scalloped 8" round boards underneath my cake.  It was just enough room to support the cake, but it made icing the sides difficult.  The tip of my spatula didn't have a continuous edge to slide against.  It was also too narrow to pipe a bottom border.  Next time I'll shoot for over-sized boards.

This was yet another opportunity to show how I stink at piping words.  I even accidentally spelled it as "Happy Birtha" before realizing what I was doing.  Not the prettiest cake, but it was actually pretty damn good tasting.  I was talking to my husband's cousin after dessert, and he suggested having a layer of chocolate underneath the peanut butter IMBC.  Having the cake covered in ganache first would be the BOMB.  I can't wait to have another go at this combo.  Marzipan is another medium I'm looking forward to using again soon.

My kitchen is a mess ... I'm procrastinating cleaning it and staying up late to blog instead ...