My first Sky High Cake

Sour-Cream Chocolate Cake
with Peanut Butter Frosting and Chocolate Peanut Butter Glaze

Before i begin, i would like to make a shout out to Deb from Smitten Kitchen for inspiring me to attempt my first triple layer cake. I was so inspired by Deb's Wedding cake that i just had to take it upon myself to do this. So once again Deb thank you.

After i read about the book Sky High Irresistible Triple Layer Cake in Deb's blog, i went straight to the library to borrow it. Flipping through it i was amazed at how they explained all the technicalities and the nature of many of the ingredients.

The weekend came and it was cake making time. The cake was fairly simple. It didn't have any butter so i really didn't need a mixer. It was more like a brownie cake because oil was added to the flour and sugar and then eggs were mixed in the end. The batter was too much though. My ordinary cake bowl was not big enough.I knew this just by looking at the ingredients. I had to use my mom's casserole dish to mix it.

I made the cake on Saturday and let it cool completely before beginning to frost it on
Sunday. The frosting was something that i would not have tried previously .. because it was a Peanut Butter frosting and i'm not really a huge fan of that.. but i thought what the heck.. i'm gonna do this...

Crumb coating the cake

The recipe called for 5 cups of confectioner's sugar but i reduced it to 4 cups because even though i have a super sweet tooth, my family prefers concoctions that are less sweet. The frosting was still sweet but bearable at least enough to get my famiy's sign of approval. So i did the crumb coat first and let it set in the refrigerator. I tried to thin it as much as possible because i had no idea how thick or thin the crumb coat should be. Then took it out and started frosting it proper. But this was a difficult frosting to work with. It wasn't smooth and had a lot of air pockets in it . Eventually i finished frosting it but if i could i would have worked on it a bit longer.

Peanut Butter Glaze

After the frosting, there was a glaze to put on the top. But as you can see bits of the crumb still came out. But given that this is my second attempt at frosting a cake, i just told myself that i'll get better. Now the chocolate was to be melted with some peanut butter and corn syrup. I put it all in a bowl and into the microwave. Took it out and it started to seize ! Arghhh but fear not i learnt young that adding oil to seized chocolate can save it and you can see that it worked.

When i sliced it, i was SO EXCITED with the three layers !!!

The Finale

The cake was tall and beautiful ! (to me anyway) The cake was moist and gooey not really crumbly. The frosting was definitely peanut buttery and the glaze was really the icing on the top.

Cuppycakes

The recipe was designed for 8 inch cake pans but i only had 6 inch ones. So i used some of the batter to make cupcakes and used the rest for the cake.