Peeps Cake

I saw a picture of a cake in Reader’s Digest recently and decided that I had to make it—it was very cute and at the same time not too difficult.  When I heard that our ward was having a break-the-fast potluck last night I decided that the time had come.  I forgot to take a picture, so all I have is one taken with a cell phone. 

Here is a picture from online that shows the details better.  As you can see mine is taller, but I think that next time I would do the bigger layers & just do 2 of them.  Although a 3 layer cake always feels so elegant to me.  Though now that I’ve typed that I can see that perhaps I shouldn’t be using the words “peeps” and “elegant” in the same description, anyway…

I was going to use a cake mix, but didn’t have one in the pantry like I thought I did.  (I guess I could have combined the 1/2 box of strawberry cake mix with the 1/2 box of funfetti cake mix…it could have been interesting and we would have called it strawfetti.)  Instead I made a cake from Allrecipes, with a few modifications.

4 Egg Yellow Cake

½ cup shortening
½ cup butter
2 cups white sugar
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups milk

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour one 9 x 13 inch pan.

2. Cream together shortening and sugar. Beat in eggs and vanilla.

3. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt. Add to creamed mixture alternately with milk. Mix well. Pour batter into prepared pan.

4. Bake for 45 minutes, or until cake tests done. Cool.

I baked my 8.5” rounds for about 30-35 minutes.

 

For the frosting I was just going to use the recipe on the powdered sugar bag, until I saw that it had both shortening and butter in it.  Yuck.  Shortening in the cake is one thing, it’s going to get all baked in with everything else.  But shortening in the frosting just seems…sub-optimal.  So instead I used another recipe modified from Allrecipes. 

Rich Chocolate Frosting

1 c. butter, softened
4 1/2 c. powdered sugar
1 c. cocoa
1 t. vanilla
1/2 c. milk

In a bowl cream butter.  Gradually add in powdered sugar, cocoa, and vanilla.  Add milk last, adding extra if you need more for the right consistency. 

 

The cake was a big hit, especially with my Peeps-loving kids!