Heavenly Salty Peanut Chocolate Cake

When cooking I rarely follow recipes (however I often look at a variety of recipes for inspiration) and when I do nine times out of ten I’ll still “personalize” the dish one way or another. Baking on the other hand is a whole other story and while I might still change up some of the flavors, I usually follow along with recipes rather closely, especially when it comes to the ratio and measurement of key ingredients such as flour, sugar, butter and eggs. There is just too much that can go wrong and nobody likes a dry, soggy or burnt cake.

Today however I was bold and baked a cake without any recipe or instructions and it turned out great. It’s a moist chocolate cake with a salty peanut caramel frosting that contrasts great with the chocolate base. I was delighted and knew right away I wanted to share my newly conceptualized recipe.

Ingredients:

For the cake:

5.6 ounces/160 grams of dark chocolate (I used 50% cocoa chocolate)

1.3 sticks/150 grams of butter

0.5 cups/120 ml of cold, strong coffee/espresso

2 medium sized eggs

1 cup/200 grams of granulated, white sugar

0.3 cup/50 grams of roasted, salted peanuts

1 tsp of baking powder

1.6 cups/200 grams of all-purpose white flour

For the frosting:

0.75 cups/150 grams of granulated, white sugar

2 tbsp/30 grams of butter

0.25 cups/60 ml of heavy cream

0.6 cup/100 grams of roasted, salted peanuts

Preparation:

Start by melting the chocolate, butter and coffee together in a hot water bath, occasionally stirring to help things along. While in the vicinity of your stove you can also start preheating your oven to 350ºF/180ºC/Gas 4.

In the meantime beat the two eggs and sugar with a whisk or mixer in a large bowl until foamy. At this point your chocolate is probably not ready, so while waiting you can start crushing the peanuts (for both the cake and frosting if you want to be smart) into chunks of various sizes (I recommend putting them in a plastic bag and beating them up with a rolling pin).

Once the chocolate, butter and coffee have melted, let it cool down a little and start whisking it into the sugar and egg mixture. Next sift the flour and baking powder into the batter and mix until you have a homogeneous, silky batch of chocolatey goodness.

Finally throw in the crushed peanuts (a third if you crushed all of them). At this point I’m advising you to resist the urge of just gobbling down the batter as is.

Pour the dough into a buttered springform and pop it in the oven for about 30 minutes. When a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean you (and your cake) are golden.

While the cake is cooling down, you can start preparing the frosting.

If you’ve never made caramel or caramel sauce before, I recommend you to look online for a standalone post on the topic (such as this one on simplyrecipes.com) as it’s easy to mess up.

Start heating up the sugar in a tall saucepan with about 4 table spoons of water. It’s important to not stir the sugar, otherwise sugar crystals will form and ruin your frosting. In a separate saucepan also start heating up the butter and cream, just until the butter is melted.

When the sugar has turned into a beautiful, bubbling, golden-brown caramel turn off the heat, pour your butter and cream mixture into the saucepan and whisk vigorously. Be careful as the caramel is extremely hot and the cream will foam up.

Leave the caramel sauce to cool down for a couple of minutes (not too long though, otherwise it will be hard to spread on the cake). Scatter the remaining crushed peanuts on top of your cake and pour the caramel sauce on top of it all.

Now all that is left to do is wait for the caramel to set and enjoy!