Chocolate Peanut Pave Cake

Dear Readers,
I have to apologize for not writing since last month! I will blame it all on my nine month old who refuses to nap!!  I have still been trying new recipes and making some mental notes on each so I can create new entries.  Here is the fist of a few:


In the pages of February's Good Housekeeping I saw a picture for this cake and HAD to make it.  It is a Chocolate Peanut Pave Cake.  Check out the link- the cake is gorgeous!
So I made it two nights ago for Valentine's Day.  The recipe was easy, although a bit time consuming.  I liked spreading the batter out on my jelly roll pan to make a thin cake that would be cut into layers.  I had never done that before.  


The batter was easy to make but when I folded in the chocolate into the egg mixture it was a speckled brown.  Maybe I needed to stir it more?  But the cake came out a non-speckled brown color, although not the dark chocolate color in the picture.  The cake was surprisingly easy to assemble.  The frosting was easy to make and I liked using the semi-sweet chocolate to make a fabulous ganache.


While spreading the frosting over the cake I got crumbs into the frosting and was cursing myself for not doing a "crumb layer" of frosting.  Not that the directions called for it, but Martha would have done it.  Next time.


I did not however make the pave topping.  I just used some peanut butter to make hearts all over the top of the cake. It was a little more festive for Valentine's Day (actually I snipped the hole to big in the bag and a huge glob of peanut butter came out so I turned it into a heart).


So everything up until now was fine.  When I tasted the cake, I was disappointed. I thought that the cake was dry and it did not have that great chocolate flavor I was expecting.  I wasn't crazy about the chopped peanuts in each layer, maybe that just added to the dryness of the cake.  On the other hand, the frosting was delicious! I mean really delicious and I'm not a frosting lover.


I think that if I do make this cake again, I would use a boxed cake mix for the cake, skip the chopped up peanuts and just frost between the layers and the outside of the cake.  Or maybe I'll just make the frosting and eat that right out of the bowl...


Here is the link:
Chocolate Peanut Pave Cake


ps- pictures to follow!