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I’m wanting to make a chocolate, peanut butter and Nutella cake. Do I just add peanut butter and Nutella to the sponge mixture? And if so, how much? I bake my cakes with stork and someone told me that the sponge will then be too greasy? Any help would be appreciated .

Hi Tomandhen123

Are you wanting to add the peanut butter and the nutella into the cake batter? If you are, I would suggest only adding about a table spoon of each. Both the peanut butter and the nutella contain their own oils, conbined with a soft fat like Stork it may well cause greasiness. You might be better off making different flavoured layers and stacking them. I’ll have a scout around for recipes and let you know. 🙂

Thank you. I did have a go at a recipe i found online which had good reviews, it said to use butter and initially, mix the butter, sugar, eggs and yogurt, then add flour but tha’ts as far as i got, as it was a mess in that the yogurt looked all curdled and mixture was like liquid!! No idea where i went wrong.
The cake is going to be a tier on a wedding cake and i wanted to have a practice.

I haven’t been able to find a reasonable recipe yet. However, is this the recipe you’ve been following:

http://www.handbagsandcupcakes.co.uk/2012/09/recipe-triple-layer-chocolate-nutella.html

If it is, try blending the yogurt in into the butter, egg and sugar by hand rather than in the mixer. Even if it is curdled, once the flour is added it will all come together. I think it’s much more sensible to make the different flavoured layers to maintain a decent textured cake. Another way would be to make a chocolate cake and fill it with nutella and peanut ganache. Crumbcoat with normal ganache to keep the cake strong.

Let me know what you think, in the meanwhile I’ll keep searching. How soon do you need the recipe?

Yes this is the recipe. I tried mixing it in the kenwood mixer and by hand but no good. It says to mix in flour once mixture has been split into 3 tins, this would be impossible with it not mixing properly and being so liquid.

Thank you so much for your help and ill keep looking for ideas. I would need a good recipe by the end of April. x

It could be the Kenwood making the yogurt too runny, it’s a bit like when cream cheese is over beaten it becomes liquid. It could also be the lack of fat in the Stork. I’m going to bake the recipe up tomorrow and make a couple of alterations to see how best to make it work. I’ve had a good look for other recipes but they are mainly for brownies. Is this going to be stacked? We have time to find something or adapt what we have here. Hang in there! 🙂

I didn’t use stork, I used butter as it says in the recipe. Thank you so much for your help!

I’ve baked the cake layers up and they have come out lovely.

I feel the only reason the mixture curdled is that the yogurt must have been colder than the other ingredients. This means it didnot emulsify with the butter egg and sugar as well as it should have. It’s like mixing cold milk into butter, it won’t work. But if you were to warm the milk up slightly it will mix in better without beading.

If you try again, warm the yogurt up enough to take the chill off of it. All the ingredients must be at the same temperature. It will still curdle slightly because the recipe contains a lot of eggs. Don’t worry about this, take your time to emulsify the eggs as well as you can. Divide the mixture up as written in the recipe. Place one mixture back into the mixing bowl and add to it the peanut butter, mix until incorporated. Add to it the flour and mix until smooth. Pour into one prepared baking pan. Without washing the mixing bowl, do the same with the nutella and finally the cocoa powder. Do the cocoa powder last as it is the darkest. You’ll notice that once the flour has been incorporated, the mixture is no longer split. Try and get the pans into the oven as quickly as possible because of the levening which will begin to activate.

Bake at the given time. I baked for 30 minutes at 160c fan oven. It may have been better perhaps 25 minutes in my oven which is quite fierce. You know how your oven behaves so go by your own instinct.

We haven’t tried the cake yet. I’ve wrapped the layers up in cling and will fill tomorrow. It feels a nice dense, yet fluffy texture. I’ll let you know how it eats when we cut it. I’m going to experiment a little more with this recipe next week by using another mixing method. I can’t bake too many cakes because there is only two of us to eat them and we’ll start getting love handles 🙂

Have another go, don’t panic because how the mixture looks, just take your time. 🙂 xx

Thank you so much for taking your time to bake the cake and for all your advice. Would love to know how it tastes , as haven’t made mine yet!

We’ll be cutting it today. We’ve been busy over Easter and I didn’t have time to get it filled. Let you know later x

Thank you x

All done and slices eaten already, naught, naughty! 🙂

It’s a really lovely cake but it’s almost like a truffle which melts in the mouth. The taste of each layer is defined and not lost. I love the taste of the peanut butter layer (bottom layer).

If you’re using the ganache that goes with it, I wouldn’t recommend it under fondant. It goes firm but because it contains the nutella, the oils would seep into the icing. I would say use it for the filling only and normal ganache for the crumb coat and cover. When I make it again, I will use 100ml of cream for the ganache to make it a smoother filling. The nutella makes it thick and creamy and it tastes like heaven. I added two teaspoons of vanilla bean to the ganache.

Because the cake is so truffly, it is absolutely necessary to use a hot knife when cutting. Dip the knife into hot water, wipe the blade and cut. Do this with every slice for a clean portion.

If you can, make a smaller trial cake as a taster. You could let your customer have a portion to try. I love it and will probably make it for my neighbour’s 75th birthday at the end of this month. I dare not make it for us again, it’s far too moorish.

Finally, when you make it, it is really important to follow the mixing steps as written. Add the flour last to prevent the rising agent from activating too soon. Then get the layers in the oven quickly. 🙂 xx

Thank you so much, just bought the ingredients and trying it later. Shall I warm the yoghurt in microwave just to bring it to room temperature? Sorry for all the questions x

I’m not putting fondant on, as customer wants it as a naked cake x

Yes, you can warm the yogurt in the micro wave. Turn the temperature down to low and only warm it in very short bursts until the chill goes off. If it heats up a bit too much leave it to cool.

My kitchen is really cold so I also warmed up the eggs by dropping them in some warm water for a couple of minutes.

If you use the given amount of cream and the ganache is too thick to spread, gently warm it in the microwave or pop the bowl over a saucepan of hot water taken off the hob for a little while. If you want, you can also use a flavoured light simple syrup to moisten the layers. Something like Frangelico hazlenut liqueur would be nice.

Hope some of these suggestions help. I would love to know how your cake turns out. xx

Thank you, it’s in the oven now. X

I made the cake and it was nice and moist, but the layers weren’t very deep. Think I would have to put more mixture in each tin. For me, I couldn’t taste the Nutella and peanut butter very much and the ganache became really oily! I spread a piece with just Nutella and was better. X

I’ve moved the cake into our dining room which is a lot warmer than the kitchen. Since then the nutella taste in the ganache has hightened. The peanut butter tasted straightaway, I think I may have been a little heavy handed with it. Each of my layers came out 1″ deep and I felt a fourth layer would be better for a slightly taller cake. Did you use milk chocolate for the ganache? If you did that may be why it went greasy as it contains more fat than dark and the nutella is very oily too. I only had 80% cocoa dark chocolate so I mixed it 50/50 with white and I would definitely use more cream next time or perhaps use whipping cream rather than double cream. We can only manage very thin slices, it’s like eating truffles. Lovely with coffee. Will you be using the recipe again? X

I think I’ll make it again but will just spread layers with only Nutella . May try adding a bit more peanut butter to the sponge and make some peanut butter buttercream. Not sure if that would work xx