Chocolate Fest Blog Party

Stephanie at Dispensing Happiness set her theme for this month's Blog Party as Chocolate!

Wow! The mind races at what to make.

It coincided (at least for me) with Father's Day so I combined two of my father-in-law's favorites - Chocolate & Peanut Butter.


This cake was a challenge for many reasons. Jen and Kasey will be happy to know not everything I make is a success. It was Kasey's urging to post the flops that kept me baking and not giving in and stopping by the bakery or Dairy Queen on my way to the in-laws.

Because there were so many options for this theme I didn't decide exactly which cake to make until last night and then I ended up not having all the ingredients for the first pick so it started off on the downside.

All bakers know, it only goes downhill from there.

The recipe made way more batter than the suggested pan could hold, but I realized that before making a mess thankfully.

Then it said to bake for 1 1/2 hours at 300. That was a long time so I set the timer for 70 minutes to check it. I should have set it for 50-55. It was dry.

The icing was bizarre. It was what I thought a simple peanut butter icing. Powdered sugar, peanut butter and butter - but the directions said to melt the butter? Okay, I'll give it a shot.

I don't think so Tim.

So I began adding more confectioners sugar and even cream cheese to try and make a decent frosting. In the end, it wasn't bad - kind of tasted like peanut butter fudge, which is not a bad thing. It just didn't have a nice creamy look to it.

To camouflage that I added crushed up Whoppers on to for decorations. What the heck, at this point I had nothing to lose.

This is when the alcohol became a need instead of a pleasure. I recently discovered Tropicana Pure juices - I'll post about that later, but this time I used the Blueberry Pomegranate juice with some chilled vanilla vodka for my own "stupidtini" - BluePomtini.