chocolate peanut butter marble cake

i saw some amazing recipes floating around the internet and blogs in the last two weeks for easter. elaborate cakes. insanely decorated cookies. fancy pants pastries.

yes, they were gorgeous. yes, time consuming. and probably worth it. but not for my audience.

as my martha-wannabe-mom said "why go to all the trouble? this crew doesn't care about bird's nest placecards. give them a chocolate egg and they'll be happy"

so i settled with chocolate cake. settled is not the right word. because i knew the combination of chocolate and peanut butter would be a huge hit. and it was.

the cake has been in my "to make" list ever since i first started following sugar plum last year.

the few changes i made were slight - i marbled the chocolate and peanut butter sides together a bit more and used my favorite alton brown chocolate frosting (look for the recipe here soon) instead of emily's recipe.

at first i was going to make a peanut butter frosting too, and use that to sandwich the layers together. but the peanut butter cake has a nice strong peanut butter flavor and the chocolate frosting balances well.

i could see these as amazing cupcakes too. just reduce the baking time to around 20-25 minutes - make sure to check them since the 20 minutes is a ballpark.

chocolate peanut butter marble cake
find the recipe at sugar plum here