If you are into rich, thick, salty-sweet, intensely peanut buttery peanut butter things…well, let me introduce you to your new favorite cake. This Flourless Peanut Butter Cake is the sort of thing that you can whip together for a casual night in (also known as every night right now) or dress it up for a birthday or dinner party (when dinner parties are a thing again).
This recipe is a play on the three ingredient peanut butter cookies that have been around forever. If you haven’t made them this quarantine, the general gist is that you mix together 1 cup of creamy peanut butter, 1 cup of sugar (brown, granulated, or a mix) and an egg, scoop, roll and bake 10-ish minutes for some really excellent grain-free peanut butter cookies.
This cake is almost exactly the same thing, except that I add a few more eggs, a pinch of salt and a little vanilla, and bake it all up in a cake pan. The result is a little chewy at the edges and tender in the center—think somewhere between Flourless Almond Cake and a cookie cake. Yum!
Lest I forget quarantine swaps…feel free to use all brown or all granulated sugar in the cake. You can leave out the vanilla too, if you’re out or running low.
After the cake has cooled, garnish all up to you. Leave it plain, dust with powdered sugar, serve with ice cream, make it into Peanut Butter Mousse Cake—whatever makes you happy.
Today marks fifty days of lockdown in NYC, so I felt the need to jazz it up a little. I nuked chocolate chips and peanut butter until smooth, then loaded it into a bag, snipped a tiny corner and drizzled til I liked what I saw. The border is just chopped roasted peanuts and mini peanut butter cups from Trader Joe’s. I know it’s gilding the lily, but like…what else are we doing seven weeks in?
Flourless Peanut Butter Cake
makes one 8-inch round cake
1 cup creamy-style peanut butter (not natural-style)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup light or dark brown sugar, packed
pinch of Kosher or sea salt
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
4 large eggs, room temperature
Drizzle (optional):
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1 teaspoon creamy-style peanut butter
Garnish (optional):
chopped peanuts
miniature peanut butter cups
chopped peanut butter cups
Reese’s pieces
chocolate chips
dusting of confectioners sugar
Place an oven rack in the center position. Preheat oven to 350F. Grease an 8-inch round cake pan and line with parchment. Grease again. Set aside.
In a medium mixing bowl, use an electric mixer to beat peanut butter, granulated and brown sugars until combined and a bit fluffy, about 2 minutes. Mix in salt and vanilla. Add eggs one at a time, mixing to combine after each addition. Beat on high for 30 seconds.
Transfer batter to prepared pan. Bake 27-30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean or with only a few moist crumbs (not batter). Let cake cool 30 minutes in the pan on a rack. Cake will deflate a bit as it cools.
Run a thin knife around the edge of the pan and invert onto a plate (or rack). Peel off parchment. Place a serving plate upside-down onto the bottom the cake. Holding on tightly to both plates (but not so tightly as to crush the cake), flip the cake to be right side-up on the serving plate. Let cake cool completely.
Make the drizzle. Combine chocolate chips and peanut butter in a small microwave-safe bowl. Microwave in 15 second increments, stirring in between, until smooth. Load into a plastic sandwich bag, snip a tiny corner and drizzle onto the cake as desired. Alternatively, drizzle with a fork or use an offset icing knife (or the back of a spoon) to spread it onto the cake. This will likely be more than you need.
Garnish as desired. To set the drizzle, refrigerate the cake for 15 minutes.
Slice and serve. Leftover cake will keep covered at room temperature for up to four days, and in the refrigerator for a bit longer.
I posted my best-yet 
If you are an Oatmeal Raisin fan, you’ll love these sweet little bars. They’re super chewy thanks to low flour content, a glut of old-fashioned oats, and a high brown sugar-to-dry ingredients ratio. The raisins are plumped in simmering water before mixing for maximum flavor and texture.
Deep toasty flavor comes courtesy of brown butter and toasted oats. You could, of course, just melt your butter and use your oats straight out of the bag, but spending a few minutes drawing out their nutty richness makes a huge difference in the final outcome. A teaspoon of cinnamon rounds out the batter and makes these blondies pretty irresistible!
These blondies bake up in 25 or so minutes, until the top is puffed and a little glossy. Let them cool until room temperature and then slice into pieces. The tops will crack in the best way and the middles will be dense and…well, they’re *very* good. The perfect low-maintenance sort of thing to make on this quarantine Wednesday.
In trying to work with the baking supplies I’ve 
Yes, this Super Sprinkle Popcorn is loaded with rainbow sprinkles—absolute heaven for a sprinkle enthusiast like myself. The popcorn is popped in oil (you can also use the plain microwave stuff), then tossed with melted white chocolate, sprinkles, and Funfetti crumbs.
Yeah, Funfetti crumbs. Like crispy, crunchy pieces of Funfetti cookie that are the size and texture of what you’d find on top of a crumb cake, which is exactly what these are. I’ve simply taken the crumb topping from my 
All that said, if you don’t have the ingredients for the crumbs, this popcorn can be made without them and still be sweet, sprinkly and colorful. You can also toss in a couple of cups of broken Oreos (regular, Golden or Birthday Cake!), vanilla wafers, graham crackers, or any other crispy addition you can think up.
This popcorn is so delicious! If you are a texture person, you’re in for a treat. Light, airy popcorn, crispy crumbs, creamy white chocolate coating and crunchy sprinkles make for texture heaven! No two bites are the same; you might get equal parts popcorn and crumb, big crumbs, little crumbs, or a big cluster of sprinkles. It’s all part of the fun!
Super Sprinkle Popcorn is the perfect treat to have for a movie or game night, for spending some time outside, or as an alternative to a traditional celebration cake. Or, you know, just another thing to spend time making and sharing during this quarantine weekend.
Cake with frosting seems like it’s almost not allowed right now, but this is not just any cake and this is not just any day. Coronavirus be damned.
If you’re scratching your head wondering what today is…well, it’s Earth Day, and that is important. But there’s also something that I don’t talk about much on here because it seems mostly irrelevant to the daily operation of a food blog…but it’s actually completely relevant because there would be no E2 Bakes without it. Today marks seven years since I took a drink or a drug. Yep, I’m that sober home-baking food blogger that nobody warned you about.
Quitting drinking and putting mind-altering substances in my body is the kindest thing I’ve ever done for myself and the people I love. I’ve gained so much more from that one decision (and many moments of grace and a lot of trudging) than I will ever be able to adequately express, least of all the ambition to run a baking blog. And, well, now you know why there is never liquor in my bakes or wine in my sauces–I can’t post something I can’t test.
Layer cakes are out for now and flour is difficult to find, but chocolate and frosting (and sprinkles!) are always welcome in my kitchen. Today’s cake is one of the best chocolate cakes I have ever had—so tender and chocolaty! If I weren’t telling you right now, I bet you’d never guess that it’s made with a cup of cooked quinoa instead of flour. For real.
The batter—which includes cocoa powder, a hint of coffee, eggs and milk—is made in a blender to eliminate any whole pieces of quinoa. I wouldn’t recommend making most cake batters in a blender, but since this cake is naturally gluten-free, there’s no need to worry about overmixing or tough cake. Score!
Chocolate Quinoa Cake bakes up in 30 minutes and is thin enough that it cools within an hour. I topped it off with a small batch of chocolate buttercream and dug into my stash of rainbow sprinkles for the occasion.
Oh yeah, that’s the stuff.
As for quarantine substitutions:
Whew! Okay. Now that you’re armed with everything you need to make a kickass gluten-free chocolate cake, go find something to celebrate. I promise you will. 
e2 bakes brooklyn 