Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cake

This is a doctored cake-mix recipe that punches way above its weight. A full cup of peanut butter and 12 ounces of chocolate chips get folded into a yellow cake mix, and the result is closer to a thick peanut-butter blondie than a fluffy birthday cake.

The batter looks alarmingly stiff, almost like a soft cookie dough. That is correct. Peanut butter is doing the same job here that butter and brown sugar do in a blondie, anchoring the structure and pulling everything chewy.

Bake until a toothpick comes out with just a few moist crumbs. Pulling the pan a minute or two early is better than overbaking, because peanut butter dries out fast in the oven and you want the center to stay soft and a little underdone-looking.

Cutting into squares rather than slicing wedges is the move. Each piece ends up dotted with melted chocolate pockets and a faint salty edge from the peanut butter.

Pro Tips

• Use no-stir, conventional peanut butter (the supermarket stuff). Natural peanut butter separates and changes the moisture balance, leaving you with a greasy, dense cake.
• Stir the chocolate chips in by hand, not with the mixer. The paddle will smash them and tint the batter brown.
• Line the pan with parchment leaving an overhang on two sides, and you can lift the whole slab out for tidy cuts.
• Cool fully in the pan. Cutting warm gives you ragged edges and chips that smear.

Variations

• Swap half the chocolate chips for peanut butter chips for a double-PB version.
• Sprinkle flaky sea salt across the warm top for a salted-PB finish.
• Drizzle cooled squares with melted chocolate or a simple peanut butter glaze for a more dressed-up presentation.