With Drew and I’s third anniversary (!) fast approaching, I brainstormed ideas on special things to do. A friend tries to “recreate” her wedding cake each year for her anniversary, and I thought this was a cool idea. Armed with a 50% off coupon for Michael’s, I found a cupcake cake pan that looked vaguely like our wedding cake.

I couldn’t remember exactly what flavor our wedding cake was (I vaguely remember chocolate and raspberry…), plus I knew I couldn’t make it as good as our friend LaDon who made the original. So I just decided to make any flavor and have fun with my limited cake decorating skills.

Since my hubby is such a chocolate/peanut butter fan, I decided to make a chocolate/peanut butter cake. I searched through a cupcake recipe book that my sister had given me and found a recipe. The recipe entailed FOUR different recipes and turned out to be more time consuming than I thought. I ended up making two separate cake batters and combining them, and then made two different frostings. Whew.

I ended up baking the cakes one night and making the frosting the next. I was hoping to get a nice swirly pattern when I mixed the batters but it ended up all mushing together into a brownish hue.

The cake took awhile to bake, since the pan was so deep. It ended up being a tad dry, and I wonder if it’s from having to bake so long.

I made chocolate and peanut butter frosting.

I used the peanut butter frosting as the filling between the layers. Good thing, cause that stuff proved hard to work with. After boiling butter, brown sugar, and water, I mixed in the peanut butter and vanilla. The recipe said to put the frosting on while hot, but I was afraid I’d melt the cake. But then I realized that it was getting hard as it cooled. So I went ahead and put it between the layers. I’m glad I did, because it was about impossible to do much with it after it cooled. And it separated from the oil. Weird stuff. I managed to do a bit of decorating with it, but not much, as it proved really hard to get that stuff through any of my decorating tips.

The chocolate frosting was much easier to work with.

Mustering all the cake decorating skills I could remember, I managed to frost the cake. It was a bit difficult to get all the spots covered. I think I probably needed a wider tip that would cover more surface area. I did my best and tried to fill in all the bare areas. Then I got as creative as I could with the leftover peanut butter frosting. I had originally thought I might whip up a batch of white frosting to do a little extra fancy decorating, but I was done with making frosting. I made do with what I had.

So, far from perfect, but pretty darn cute, I’d say. I really could have used a double batch of chocolate frosting, but as I said, I was done. With all the extra batter, I made a few cupcakes that I’ll deliver to my sis, since she also has an anniversary this week.

I think I got baking out of my system for awhile.