Peanut Butter Honey Cake with Chocolate Chip Topping

I don’t get to make this sort of snack cake very often. I bake cakes for Birthdays, cookies for Friday and sometimes coffee cake or quick bread for early in the week. This week I was heading to a conference so my schedule was a bit different. I decided to make a cake and take it mid-week, just to mix it up a bit. But what to make? I had a lot of fun looking through my cookbooks to find something.

I saw the picture of this cake and knew this was the one to make. Peanut butter and honey, topped with chocolate chips? Yum! I love honey and thought that the peanut butter and honey cake sounded divine. I liked that this used regular pantry ingredients, so I didn’t have to go and buy anything extra. I did use the last of my chocolate chips, which is quite a feat since I buy the giant bag at Costco.

The topping was a little tricky to put together. Reading the recipe I figured I’d be able to stir the topping together by hand, but that didn’t really work so I dumped it in the mixer bowl and that was much more successful. It came out of the oven all bumpy and it just looked great. The base of the cake is soft and light but the topping is gooey and decadent. This is such a great cake.

½ cup butter, softened

¼ cup peanut butter

¾ cup honey

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups flour

1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder

¾ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

¾ cup buttermilk

½ cup peanut butter

¾ cup sugar

2 tablespoons flour

1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 9” x 13” pan.

In a large mixer bowl, beat together the butter, ¼ cup peanut butter, and honey. Blend in the eggs and vanilla. In a separate bowl stir together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the flour to the butter mixture alternately with the buttermilk, starting and ending with the flour mixture. Pour in the prepared pan.

Prepare the topping: in a mixer bowl, combine the ½ cup peanut butter, sugar, and flour. Stir in the chocolate chips. Crumble the topping over the cake batter.

Bake for 25-30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Recipe from Favorite Brand Name Bake Sale Cookbook