The Cake for Foreign Kitchens, Tight Schedules, Brunch Dessert, and Dummies

Tra-la-la, it's The Fall Cookbook Cake Parade: a new cake from a new cookbook every single day. Are your costumes cake pans ready?

Today: An idiot-proof, hangover-proof peanut butter cake from Molly on the Range.

Molly on the Range, the first cookbook from food blogger—and longtime Food52 contributor—Molly Yeh is as much a reflection of her style of cooking as it is her life on a sugar beet farm on the North Dakota-Minnesota border. (Molly, a native of Chicago, ended up there by way of New York City—her Scandinavian-American husband is a fifth-generation farmer.)

Her cookbook is chock full of fanciful and fun recipes that are inspired by her childhood, her Chinese-Jewish heritage, and now her experience on a Midwestern farm. She relies on this peanut butter cake for any last-minute impressing or ill-equipped kitchens. About it, she says:

"This cake is great because it is so rich and peanut buttery that it does not need to be frosted. Of course, I won’t complain if you do frost it, but my point is, this puppy can be whipped out and ready to eat in very little time. It is idiotproof, hangoverproof, and can be made in even the most unequipped kitchens, for brunch dessert, lunch dessert, or dinner dessert. I’d encourage you to memorize this recipe and make it if ever you find yourself bored in a foreign kitchen or around people you want to impress in a short-ish amount of time. It’s the tastiest with the least amount of effort. Top it with a plop of yogurt, whipped cream, berries, a dusting of powdered sugar, or nothing at all."

For more recipes from Molly Yeh's first cookbook, check out Molly on the Range.