peanut butter spice cake

You know when you get a puppy and he's really cute but really badly behaved so you get your dog behaviourist friend to come visit you and teach you how to raise a nice dog, and you feel bad about her travelling such a long way so you make a peanut butter cake? That's what happened to me.

Ingredients:

30g butter, softened

¾ cup caster sugar

5tbsp smooth peanut butter (at room temperature)

1 large egg

1 1/3 cups self raising flour

Pinch salt

½ tsp each ground cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger

¼ tsp ground cloves

1 cup buttermilk (or 1 cup milk soured with 1 tbsp lemon juice)

Method:

1.  Cream butter with sugar until light and fluffy, then beat in peanut butter. Add eggs and mix well.

I only had raw caster sugar so the creaming part wasn't very creamy. Either that or therejust isn't enough butter in the mixture for it to cream.

I didn't have any cloves so I was a little heavy-handed with the rest of the spices.

2. Sift together flour, salt and spices and fold alternately into creamed mixture with buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour. Turn batter into greased and floured 20cm (8in) square cake tin and place in a preheated moderate oven (180C).

3. Bake for 40 minutes or until a skewer inserted into centre comes out clean. Let cake cool in tin on wire rack for 10 minutes before turning out to cool completely. Serve plain, orice with chocolate icing. 

Verdict: Pretty yummy, but would have been better if the only peanut butter I had wasn't hippy peanut butter that contains only peanuts and no added sugar or salt. I added a little extra salt to make up for this, but it still tasted a little wholesome. Also, the peanut butter was crunchy so the texture was a bit weird. Very moist and fluffy though!