justin’s pancake birthday cake

my friend justin loves pancakes. my friend justin also loves cake. so … when i was trying to come up with the perfect cake for his birthday i decided to combine the two!

now, i have to admit, i originally intended to make him something else– it wasn’t until the day of that this idea hit me, so i was scrambling to figure out the best way to do this. i considered making lots and lots of really thin cakes. i considered using actual pancakes. i even tried putting one of them in a frying pan to give it a little bit of a real pancake look (this was a BAD idea, incase you were wondering). i ended up going with two half-height 9″ cakes and two half-height 8″ cakes, using only one batch of batter. for the batter, i started with a simple yellow cake and added in an arbitrary amount of natural peanutbutter as well as some chocolate chips.

once i had the cakes done, i had to figure out what to use for the syrup. i quickly thumbed through some of my recipe books and a couple websites before remembering a poured ganache that i had used for a previous cake. i, of course, then remembered that i made up that recipe as i went and apparently never recorded it. oops. so, i tried my best to recreate it, while also adding in peanutbutter. truth be told, i have no idea what i made, but it sure did taste good. i spread this between layers, then poured it over the top. i had thought to use peanutbutter fudge for the butter, but i didnt feel like making a whole batch nor going out and buying any….so i went with the next best thing: i froze a lump of peanutbutter until it was solid enough to be cut into a square.

unfortunately when making cakes you dont get to taste them (i am sure the recipient would notice a missing piece), but i hear it was quite tasty!