This one needs no big introduction. You don’t need me to tell you what swirls of Nutella taste like, hidden in a tender, peanut butter cake. I’m pretty sure you are imagining it right now.

I baked this cake a lot of times until I got it just the way I wanted it. Nutella is fairly sweet for my taste so I added some dark chocolate in the Nutella mixture to balance the sweetness. And it came out phenomenal. The oozing chocolate is all there, buried in layers of tender, peanut buttery, heavenly cake.

As I said, no long intro. Just bake this cake. Eat. Repeat. And trust me, you WILL repeat.

Ingredients

• ½ cup Nutella
• 35 grams dark chocolate
• 180 grams (¾ cup) unsalted butter
• ¼ cup smooth peanut butter
• 1/3 cup packed soft light brown sugar
• ½ cup granulated sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• ½ cup milk
• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 ½ tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp salt

For the pan

• Enough Butter to coat a 23 cm cake pan with a hole in the middle plus,
• ½ Tbs cocoa powder for dusting the pan

Method

Preheat oven to 175 C.

Combine the Nutella and dark chocolate in a bowl of a double boiler. Heat gently stirring occasionally until Nutella loosens and dark chocolate melts completely. In a bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter, peanut butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, incorporating well after each addition. Add the vanilla extract.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add about 1/3 of the flour mixture to the mixer bowl while beating on low speed. Add the milk and the remaining flour mixture. Beat until combined. Take the bowl off the mixer.

Add about ½ of the Nutella mixture in the bowl and mix ever so slightly with the spatula. Transfer half of the cake mixture into the prepared pan. Add about a half of the remaining Nutella mixture. Top with the remaining cake batter and the remaining Nutella mixture. Swirl with a knife but don’t mix. Just make sure there are no big blobs of Nutella on the surface of the cake otherwise the cake will sink where the blob is.

Bake for 45 minutes. Leave cake in the pan for 10 minutes. Then invert on a cake platter.

Hold yourself from cutting into it right away. Wait at least an hour before cutting and serving.

This cake won’t last for more than a day.