I made this dessert once before and it is actually the recipe that, a couple years ago, prompted me to start cutting out and organizing recipes I thought looked good from magazines.  I wanted to make this cake a second time and COULD NOT remember what issue of what magazine I’d seen it in. Turns out it was the June 2010 issue of Cuisine at Home. That recipe is now neatly clipped and filed in the dessert section of a spiral notebook and is marked with 4 stars. It looks enough like a PB&J sandwich to fool some people.  And it’s what was for dessert tonight.

Cake

3 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/4 cups whole milk

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups creamy peanut butter

1 stick butter at room temperature

2 cups granulated sugar

1 cup packed brown sugar

6 eggs at room temperature

 

Preheat your oven to 350. Generously grease the bottom of 2 loaf pans.

Whisk together flour, baking powder and soda, and salt and set aside. Combine milk and vanilla and set aside. Cream peanut butter, butter, and white and brown sugar in a stand mixer with paddle attachment on medium high speed for 5 minutes until well combined. Add eggs to the creamed mixture one at a time beating well after each addition.

 

Alternately add flour and milk to creamed mixture beating after each addition just until mixed, scraping the sides of the bowl when necessary.

Divide batter evenly between prepared pans. Bake 50 minutes. If cakes are browning too much on the sides after 50 minutes loosely tent with foil and bake 10-15 minutes more until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Let cakes rest in pans on a wire rack for about 20 minutes then turn them out to cool completely.

Peanut Butter Icing

3/4 cup peanut butter

1 stick butter at room temperature

3 cups powdered sugar sifted

1/4 cup milk

2 tsp vanilla extract

 

Beat peanut butter and butter at medium speed until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add powdered sugar, milk and vanilla and beat just until smooth and creamy. 

 

Assemble your sandwiches. Slice the cake loaf.

Spread a slice with a generous amount of peanut butter icing and jam of your choosing (I used my homemade strawberry jam). Put a second slice of cake on top, just like making a PB&J sandwich, and enjoy!  Great with a glass of milk or a cup of coffee.

 

After the first time I made this cake my daughter bought me a cake pan shaped like a slice of bread. Today I baked one loaf pan of batter and the slice of bread shaped pan with the other half of the batter. I assembled the slice of bread cake by trimming off the top to level the cake and slicing it in half and spreading the icing and jam in the center. I’ll have to share that with friends…it’s a lot of cake!  (The jam on this cake is a tart cherry).