Handmade: Chocolate Peanut Butter Birthday Cake

I started out with a rich Devil's Food Cake recipe from Baked Explorations, but I baked it in a sheet pan lined with parchment, so the cooking time went down to 20 minutes.  I'm not going to rewrite their recipe, because I didn't change anything, but you should get their book.  It's definitely my favorite baking book.

Then I cut out the layers (3-6" layers and 3-3" layers) and started carefully removing the excess cake (to be used later, but you can nibble on a bit now).

I just guessed at the frosting, but I'm sure it's been done before and it came out tasting exactly like the inside of a Reese's Pieces.

1/2 c. natural creamy peanut butter
1/2 c. unsalted butter
1 tsp. vanilla

Whip the heck out of it, until it's light and fluffy.

Slowly add in 2 c. of powdered sugar, it'll be too dry and get kind of crumbly.

Add in milk 1 tbsp. at a time, until it's perfect (I think I used 2-ish).

Then I dumped in 1/3 c. of mini chocolate chips and started assembling.

Cake, icing, cake, icing, dowels, stacking... whew, almost done.

The small layers

The big layers

Then I made cake balls with the remaining cake and icing, and a little extra peanut butter because I was out of icing.

I dipped them in chocolate and let them set up and added a little gold luster dust.

I stuck in the varied size balls at various heights and called this cake done.  I really wish I had some more of it right now.