blog — molly yeh

peanut butter

#girlmeetsfarm peanut butter cup cake

in ,

My show is premiering on Food Network on Sunday and even just typing out those words makes me wanna vom and cry. But like in a good way!!! It’s really weird how there is no word to describe equal parts nervous and excited, or is there? Maybe it’s just this string of emoji 🤗🙈 over and over and over 🤗🙈🤗🙈🤗🙈. 

I wonder what Sunday will be like. I’ll be in Amsterdam, celebrating Rob’s bachelor party with a bunch of dudes. We’ll probably ride bikes and then eat fries and drink beer and I’ll probably have nervous tummy until the evening time when it’s 11 am eastern, and then I’ll probably do a shot. Is that the move? I won’t be able to actually watch Girl Meets Farm so I feel like the second best option would be to do a shot with my bridesmen, Rob and Brian.

At any rate, I made a cake to celebrate the premiere and it’s in my deep freeze right now waiting to be thawed for episode four, the first episode I’ll actually get to watch from home. It is a peanut butter cup cake! It’s very similar to the crazy moist party trick peanut butter cake from Molly on the Range and it’s covered in sweet milk chocolate frosting, cookie dirt, and marzipan vegetables. When articles came out recently defending milk chocolate I rejoiced because milk chocolate tastes good and has nothing to prove. The frosting requires melting chocolate, which, in the past has been one step more than I’ve been willing to take on the journey to frosting (I’ve historically stuck to dumping cocoa powder in with the powdered sugar to avoid dirtying up a chocolate melting pot), but adding melted chocolate makes the frosting like a luxurious rich chocolatey mousse. The cake itself is wildly easy to make and only requires two bowls and a whisk, making up for all of the work I’m making you do for the frosting.

Also (!) my friends made viewing party snacks for the premiere!!!! They are the sweetest most supportive fronds a girl could ever ask for and I’d give anything to have them with me in Amsterdam for my celebratory shot. I am so touched that they spent the time to make these delicious treats and can’t wait until the next time we can hang out irl and eat these and take mirror selfies all together.

Stephanie made a donut version of the grapefruit olive oil loaf cake from Short Stack Yogurt, which I will definitely be making soon. That loaf cake took me about a thousand test runs to master and it was worth it. A donut version is next level!

Lily made a surprise thing that I don’t yet know about but there’s tahini in it! She also interviewed me in the most Matt-Damon-Poop-Centric interview I’ve ever participated in. 

Alana made a stinkin beautiful plate of all of my favorite foods. Give me that for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day for the rest of my life and I will be happy.

And Michelle made tahini magic shell!!!!!!!! On a hangover!!!!! 

Peanut Butter Cup Cake

Makes one 4-layer 6” cake

Ingredients

Cake

2 c (400g) sugar
2 c (260g) all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 c (240g) buttermilk
1/2 c (100g) flavorless oil
3/4 c (178g) water
1 c (270g) creamy unsalted, unsweetened peanut butter

Frosting

6 oz (170g) milk chocolate, chopped or milk chocolate chips
1 c (225g) unsalted butter, room temperature
3 c (360g) powdered sugar
A good pinch of kosher salt
2 tb heavy cream

Assembly

Crushed chocolate cookies, optional
Marzipan kneaded with food coloring, optional
 

Clues


Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Grease four 6” round cake pans and line the bottoms with parchment. If you don’t have four pans you can bake this in batches. You can also make two 8” layers.

In a large bowl, whisk together the sugar, flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. In a medium bowl, whisk together the egg, vanilla, buttermilk, oil, water, and peanut butter. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir to combine. Pour into the pans and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Begin checking for doneness at 25 minutes.

Cool in the pans on a rack for 10 minutes and then remove to the rack and cool completely.

To make the frosting, melt the chocolate in a double boiler or in a microwave, heating for 30 seconds at a time and stirring between each increment until it is melted and smooth. Set aside to cool slightly until it is no longer hot to the touch. Meanwhile, combine the butter, powdered sugar, and salt in a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment and mix until smooth and combined. With the mixer running, gradually drizzle in the melted chocolate. Lastly, mix in the heavy cream and continue to mix, pausing occasionally to scrape down the sides of the bowl, until smooth.

To assemble, stack up the layers with a layer of frosting in between each and then frost all over. Decorate with crushed chocolate cookies and marzipan molded into your shapes of choice. Enjoy!
 

-yeh!

Photos by Chantell and Brett! Top from Of A Kind! 

P.S. I hope you guys like the facelift on this site! If you haven’t already, scroll over the logo at the top to see some sprinkles :) Also, the logo is now my handwriting and not a free font! This design was created by Hello Cereal!! 

P.P.S. For those who were wondering how to watch GMF without cable, you will be able to watch online at watch.foodnetwork.com or on the Food Network app on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung, Android TV, and mobile devices. You just need to log in with a provider (or your mom's provider like I do for HBO).

peanut butter and grape galette

in

haiiiiiii!!! did you all have a nice fourth of july???

i did. i cleaned, and did yoga, and substituted coconut oil for canola oil in challah (which turned out to be surprisingly super gross, but i'm doing yoga now so i'm *letting it go*). and then when it finally started to get dark out, which is so obnoxiously past my bedtime up here in winterfell, we went over to emily's house and mingled in the presence fireworks and live smooth rock from the town square down the road. it was great! side note: emily is getting married in five days and she's still hosting parties and taking down potato chips with generic brand french onion dip like a champ. so much admiration. 

in other news: mum is coming for a visit this week! yayayayay! she's going to help me with emily's wedding cakes and we'll probably eat at the blue moose and maybe even take a day trip to bemidji. i'm so excited. every time she visits though i have to get all of the peanut butter out of sight because she's allergic. i make eggboy convert to almond butter for the two days preceding her arrival, (sweat out any remaining peanut residue that might be left in his pores... jk, but srsly), and then bury all the jars in the back of some cabinet or try and use it all up in some baked goods to give away.

so i made a galette over the weekend when my coconut oil challah failed me!

it's a fancy pb + j sandwich. it's the easiest thing in the world. and it's the best warm out of the oven with a big dollop of yogurt or whipped cream. 

so if you have a bunch of grapes that are about to go bad, a peanut-allergic mum who is about to come to town, and/or a hankering to bake something simple yet satisfying, then this is a recipe for you. get to it!

peanut butter and grape galette

makes one galette

ingredients

1/2 c creamy peanut butter*

2 tb honey

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 lb pie crust

12 oz california grapes, halved

1 egg yolk, lightly beaten

1 tsp sugar

a pinch of flaky salt

*i use all-natural pb that's unsweetened and lightly salted. if you're using unsalted, i'd recommend adding a pinch of salt to the peanut butter mixture.

powdered sugar and yogurt or whipped cream, for serving

clues

preheat your oven to 400f. 

mix together the peanut butter, honey, and vanilla extract. roll out your pie dough on a piece of parchment or silpat and then spread on the peanut butter mixture, leaving about a 1-inch border around the edge of the crust. lay down the grapes in an even layer, leaving about a 1-inch border around the edge of the peanut butter (so you have three concentric circles), and then fold up the edges of the crust around the grapes.

brush the crust with the egg yolk and then sprinkle the entire galette with the sugar and a pinch of salt.

bake until the crust is golden brown. begin checking for doneness at 25 minutes. finish with a sprinkle of powdered sugar and serve with yogurt or whipped cream. 

-enjoy!

-yeh!

thank you so much to grapes from california for sponsoring this post!

peanut butter snack cake

in

i know that our honeymoon was 5ever ago, but i still think about all of our little afternoon cake dates that we had in austria. nearly every afternoon on our trip, eggboy and i would sheepishly poke ourselves into an old cafe and assess the cake situation before looking for a place to sit. we were always just a wee bit tense until we actually had cake and coffee in front of us because we could never be sure if we were supposed to order at a counter, at our table, or if we should wait for a tray of cake to come parading around and then wave it down. it was stressful and my limited german wasn't such that i could confidently ask about a parading tray of cake, but boy is austrian café culture great.

what fascinated me most was how all of the cafés had such similar lineups of cake, and that they were all decorated the same way. like, all of the esterházy tortes in vienna had the same little squigglies and all of the punch cakes were the exact same shade of pink. it wasn't like some punk was sitting in the kitchen, deciding on a whim to cover an entire cake in sprinkles or make a naked cake and instagram it with a nudy joke. it was way more civilized than that. there were no sprinkles. 

after a week of afternoon cake dates, i learned that splitting a slice was simply not the way to go. eggboy eats cake too fast. he'd gobble up as much as he could without coming up for a breath and then open up his big paper map and linger over our path while i carefully ate each bite. i'd stare at the chandeliers, and get to know the texture and flavor of that cake. what made this esterházy torte different from the last esterházy torte? this glaze is like pudding skin... and before i could really get to know a new cake, it would be gone. so we started ordering two slices so that his rambunctious eating habits wouldn't leave me with no cake. 

we'd talk about who had probably eaten cake in that exact room and various cake-related history factoids. what kind of cake did mozart eat?? what do you think is the history behind the frosting squigglies? can you imagine what life was like for franz sacher???

it was perfect.

i miss it.

now that spring planting has started, i'll have to deliver some cake and a stanley thermos of coffee out to a tractor to relive our afternoon cake dates. 

but a fancy frosted cake with hundreds of years of history isn't so appropriate for a tractor cake date, i don't think. so here's my homey farmy translation of afternoon austrian cake: a finger food cake that isn't frosted or decorated, one that can be whipped up in a snap and enjoyed in such a rustic place as a tractor cab.

i know, unfrosted cake is a new concept for me. but once i tweaked this recipe just so, i decided that its moist sweet perfectly peanutty easy-to-make and easier-to-eat qualities left no need whatsoever for marzipan animals. so there you have it. no more excuses, go make cake. 

peanut butter snack cake

makes one 8-inch square cake

ingredients

1 c sugar

1 c all-purpose flour

3/4 tsp kosher salt

3/4 tsp baking powder

 3/4 tsp baking soda

1 large egg

1/2 c buttermilk

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 c flavorless oil, like canola

6 tb water

1/2 c creamy peanut butter*

 

for serving:

powdered sugar

*the peanut butter that i use for this recipe only contains peanuts and salt, like smucker's natural and target's market pantry all natural.

 

clues

preheat oven to 350.

grease an 8-inch square pan (or something similar, like the pan that i used), line the bottom with parchment paper, and set it aside.

in a large bowl, whisk together all the dry ingredients. in a medium bowl, whisk together all the wet ingredients. whisk the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and then pour into cake pan and bake until the top is golden and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. begin checking for doneness at 25 minutes.

let cool for about 10 minutes in the pan and then turn onto a lightly greased cooling wrack. 

dust with powdered sugar, cut into squares, and serve! store in an airtight container for up to a few days, or freeze for up to a few weeks.

 

-yeh!

this post features goodies from zola registry! eggboy and i used zola for our wedding registry and we had the jolliest time picking out homeware from their pretty collection as well as being able to add whatever else we wanted from around the internet. (how else can you have a smeg fridge and silkie chickens on your registry?) if you are engaged and looking to register, check out zola and get $25 added to your account with this link! also be sure to check out my little baking-centric tastemaker collection. thanks so much for sponsoring this post, zola!!! 

here are the pieces that are pictured: red rimmed plates // blue rimmed plates // red rimmed mugs // gold flatware // blue rimmed baking dish // kitchen-aid // linen napkins // square cake stand