It’s no secret that chocolate and peanut butter are the perfect pair. Together, they make this vegan Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake an out-of-this-world dessert! In this recipe, my Vegan Chocolate Cake is taken up a notch and decorated with homemade peanut butter frosting and chocolate ganache. Finished with vegan peanut butter cups on top, this cake is a peanut butter and chocolate lover’s dream!
Why you’ll love this peanut butter cake
Features my 5-star vegan chocolate cake: The Best Vegan Chocolate Cake is a 5-star recipe with over 1,400 ratings! It’s easy to make in one bowl and has the most decadent chocolate flavor. Out-of-this-world peanut butter frosting: Just when you think vegan buttercream frosting can’t get any butter, peanut butter is mixed in! It adds just the right amount of nutty, peanut butter flavor to this decadent vegan chocolate cake. A perfect birthday cake: Especially for chocolate peanut butter lovers!
Ingredients needed (with substitutions)
How to make vegan chocolate peanut butter cake
Find the complete recipe with measurements below in the recipe card. Make the vegan buttermilk by measuring the soy milk in a measuring cup, then stirring in the vinegar. Set it aside to curdle. Next, whisk the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in a large bowl. Now add the oil, applesauce, vanilla, and milk/vinegar mixture to the same bowl. Mix on low speed with an electric mixer until combined. Carefully pour in the boiling water while mixing at low speed. To finish, fold the flour-coated chocolate chips into the batter. Pour the cake batter into your prepared cake pans, then bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Set the cake layers aside to cool while you make the frosting. Beat the peanut butter and vegan butter together in a bowl until smooth and creamy. Next, add the powdered sugar, soy milk, vanilla, and salt, then beat again until fluffy. Decorate the cooled cake layers with the peanut butter frosting, then the chocolate ganache. Serve immediately or chill it in the fridge for later. Enjoy!
Tips and tricks
This is a delicate chocolate cake and overmixing will knock all of the air out of the batter. Try to only mix the ingredients until they are just incorporated with each other. Place the soy milk, applesauce, and vegan butter on the kitchen counter 30 minutes before making this recipe. This way, they’ll have a chance to come down to room temperature, giving you better results. I made the cake in two 8-inch round cake pans, however, this recipe makes enough batter for a bundt pan (bake for 45 minutes) and a 9×13 square pan (bake for 35 to 40 minutes). If the frosting seems too thick, you can thin out the consistency by stirring in a tablespoon of milk at a time. If it’s too thin, add more powdered sugar.
Decorating tips
Remember to not use all of the peanut butter frosting to frost the cake. Swirls of piped frosting on top look so divine! To frost the cake: Once it’s fully frosted, let the cake chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. This will give the frosting time to firm up and cool before pouring the chocolate ganache on top. You can either leave the frosted cake as-is or take it up a notch with vegan chocolate ganache and peanut butter cups on top:
Frequently asked questions
Want more peanut butter recipes?
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title: “Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake” ShowToc: true date: “2024-10-31” author: “Peggie Jones”
This is a cake recipe for special occasions! And so it was, when I made this cake for my birthday a couple of weeks ago! 🙂 Usually when I make a cake (whether it’s for a birthday, a special occasion or just for the heck of it) I spend a little time making it look pretty. But this time, the flavours were just so awesome, I let them be the star. It’s a bummer that I cannot prove to you just how amazing this cake tasted, but I hope you do take my word for it. 🙂 The focus was all on flavours and I brought together some of my husband’s and my favourites in this Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake with Caramel Peanut butter Nougat Filling & Chocolate French Buttercream! Yep, I know it’s a mouthful.
Components of this chocolate peanut butter cake
An amazingly soft, delicious Chocolate Cake. Very peanutty, crunchy, chewy Peanut Daquoise layer. A beautiful filling/layer I made with Salted Caramel Buttercream and a whipped Peanut Nougat. And a rich, creamy Chocolate French Buttercream to cover all that indulgent awesomeness! All topped with Peanut Caramel Shards!
Does that sound a little over the top? If so, that’s exactly what I was going for! It’s a birthday cake after all! Unfortunately the birthday weekend weather wasn’t too kind to me. We were stuck at home with snow and ice outside which kind of messed up our plans a little bit. Regardless, I still find birthdays a lot of fun! Especially those of my loved ones. I can’t do much for my parents’ or my little sister’s birthday at the moment because they live half way across the world from me, but I did make this super fun red velvet cake with blue ombre crusting cream cheese frosting and hand-made Avengers cake toppers for Mr. K’s birthday last year! The presents are fun, the cards are fun, the cake is fun. The one thing I don’t like about birthdays though is that I get an year older. I swear, the Earth has picked up its speed of rotation in the last few years or so. There’s no way time is the same as it once was! 🙂 You know what else puts a damper on birthdays in my opinion? Facebook! Ha! Everyone knows your birthday now (although mine isn’t visible on my profile anymore). Yikes! So once a year, your wall (do they still call it that?) gets flooded with wishes from people that you won’t hear from again for another 365 days (and yep, I’m one of them too! haha). This cake started off as a wannabe Snickers cake. I didn’t quite like the idea of adding just peanuts, so I made a Peanut Dacquoise instead. It’s chewy, it’s crunchy and it has a rich peanut flavour. I also didn’t feel like having a gooey salted caramel layer in the middle either. So after a few tries, I was able to achieve the consistency I liked, and then whipped it with my favourite caramel frosting to get a deliciously creamy, slightly salty, caramel, nougat and peanut butter flavoured frosting. I mean, you could never wrong with PB-flavoured anything, could you? This peanut butter hot chocolate, peanut butter balls (buckeyes), peanut butter berry smoothie bowl, peanut butter streusel cake are all evidence of that! I love eating French buttercream, but I don’t make it often. It’s quite a rich (hence super tasty, obviously) frosting recipe, which is why I used it here just to cover the cake. I used my recipe for this, but I adopted the “Swiss” way of making it which makes it safer to eat. I only used one dacquoise layer for this chocolate peanut butter cake, but you’re more than welcome to use both. I love how it makes the center of the cake a little chewy and crunchy. It blends in with the frosting too and is a lovely surprise of texture and rich peanut flavour when you dig in. You can also easily double either of the filling recipes while omitting the other. They both taste equally amazing on the cake. I wanted to try them together however and I’m very glad I did! This cake is truly a celebration of rich flavours. It has a Snickers vibe going for it, though it’s not a Snickers cake. However if you like Snickers, you will love this cake. Guaranteed! What’s your favourite candy bar that you wish you could have in cake/dessert form? If you liked this recipe, don’t forget to subscribe for new (and free) recipes and updates by entering your email address below (and get all these recipes delivered straight to your inbox)! You can also visit me on FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM, PINTEREST and GOOGLE-PLUS too. I share pictures of recipes to come on the blog plus other awesome recipes I find out there that I want to try. So I hope you do stop by and say hi! 🙂
