Chocolate, Peanut Butter and Meringue Cake

Long title right?
But it tastes epic!

So here’s the deal: I wanted to make a chocolate cake…I also wanted peanut butter on toast with golden syrup…I also really wanted to use my cook’s blowtorch.
That’s how this epic, awesome, amazing and downright fantastic cake was born. (Too much?)

Let’s start with the chocolate cake.

- 150g Caster Sugar
- 50g Soft Dark Brown Sugar
- 100g Butter
- 2 Eggs
- 45g Cocoa Powder
- 1tsp Baking Powder
- 1tsp Bicarb
- 180g Plain Flour
- 160g Milk

1. Start by creaming the sugars and the butter together. Technically the recipe only called for caster sugar but I always add some brown sugar because it adds depth and texture to the final product and helps the caster sugar to cream with the butter. Little tip there.
2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing thoroughly between additions and scraping down the bowl.
3. Add the cocoa powder, baking powder and the bicarb and mix well.
4. Add half the flour and mix. Add all the milk and mix. Add the rest of the flour and mix well.
5. Bake the cakes in an oven at 170 Degrees C for 25-30 minutes.

The Filling:
- 60g Butter
- 300g Icing Sugar
- 1TBsp Milk
- 2TBsp Peanut Butter

1. Mix the butter and icing sugar together until combined
2. Add the milk (more if necessary) and beat until fluffy (around 8 minutes)
3. Add the peanut butter and beat further for 3 minutes

The Meringue:
- 200g Caster Sugar
-150ml Water
- 4 Egg Whites

1. Put the water and sugar into a saucepan and boil until it reaches the softball stage (I’ll discuss this later in the post)
2. You need to whisk the eggs until they’re foamy
3. Very carefully add the sugar syrup to the egg whites while mixing on a low speed. The sugar syrup may splatter and it will burn you if it comes in contact with your skin so be super duper careful people!!!!!!
4. When you’ve added the syrup, turn the mixer up to high. You need to continue to mix the meringue until the bottom of the bowl is lukewarm. You’ll see the meringue thicken and then it’s ready.

    

Firstly the two cakes need to be stuck together with the peanut butter frosting in the middle. I like to turn my cakes so that the flat bottoms are facing each other in the middle. This means that I have a nice rounded top and that my buttercream has a flat platform.
Pile the meringue over the top of the meringue and then use a wet spatula or pallete knife to create spikes and ridges all over the cake (trust me on this, you do not want a smooth cake).
Finally, take a cook’s blowtorch and cook the meringue until golden brown. You don’t want to burn the meringue and you don’t want an all over brown. Try to catch the ridges and spikes with the blowtorch to create depth. There is also a trick for putting the cake under a grill if you don’t have a blowtorch but I haven’t tried it and so can’t tell you much about it at all. But I’m sure someone out there on the internet knows so go a-diggin’.

Samantha

PS. I gave the cake away but obviously giving away cake with a piece missing isn’t good practice so I made an extra slice from some of the cake I cut away to make it even and gave that to my dad to try.

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