Peanut Butter Honey Buttermilk Cake with Chocolate-Peanut Butter Streusel is tender, moist, and buttery, thanks to the buttermilk, butter, and peanut butter. The streusel layer is chock full of peanut butter flavor and is bursting with chocolate chips. Best of all, the cake is made in one bowl in 5 minutes. No one has to know how fast and easy it is to make.
A few weeks ago I went to Big Potluck and was assigned to bring a cake to share. It was, after all, a potluck.
This was my contribution.
I was stumped about what kind of cake to make. I thought and thought about it. And thought some more. I read recipes on blogs, Pinterest, Foodgawker, and more. Cooking for an event where fellow bloggers, cookbook authors, and a Food Network TV show host may eat it was adding just a wee bit of pressure.
I opted to go with peanut butter and chocolate. Shocking, I know. Since my cookbook is about peanut butter, I thought that I may as well represent. The cake isn’t in my book, but I wish it was.
It’s a fast and easy cake to make, and only one bowl is dirtied. There’s no long creaming of ingredients, or separating eggs, or anything fussy or complicated.
The batter comes together in 5 minutes, it bakes for about 25 minutes, so it’s literally a 30 minute cake.
There’s no granulated or brown sugar in the cake layer, and instead it’s sweetened with honey. I love honey and had never made a cake exclusively sweetened with it until now.
It’s a more delicate and mellow sweetness, rendering the cake just sweet enough, and it won’t leave you with a toothache.
The other bonus to this cake is that it doesn’t need to be frosted because of the streusel. I love eating frosting, but I don’t like the act of frosting cakes or cupcakes. I prefer glazes, drizzles, or ganaches that can be poured over without much fuss. Even better is streusel.
It was a miracle I didn’t pick it all off, but wanted to.
The photo shoot was so hard because I wanted to tear into the cake so badly, but refrained. It was worth the wait when I was finally able to eat a piece of my own cake at the potluck.
Sadly, I forgot to take a picture of my own cake. I was too busy with wine.
The cake itself is soft, tender, and springy. It loosely reminds me a yellow cake mix cake, but better. Anything spiked with buttermilk, honey, and peanut butter is destined to be moist and bouncy.
It’s surprisingly lighter than you’d imagine given the list of ingredients. Buttermilk has a way of moisturizing and tenderizing anything it touches, while also keeping things lighter and fluffier.
The streusel topping with brown sugar, peanut butter, and chocolate chips is so tempting. I wanted to pluck those golden crumbs right off the cake and into my mouth.
Chocolate and peanut butter are always a match made in heaven, and those big nuggets add a boost of bold peanut butter and chocolate flavor.
Streusel topping with peanut butter and chocolate in a one-bowl fast and easy cake.
It’s my idea of a good cake and a good time, for sure.
Pin This Recipe
Enjoy AverieCooks.com Without Ads! 🆕
Go Ad Free
Peanut Butter Honey Buttermilk Cake with Chocolate-Peanut Butter Streusel
Ingredients
Cake
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
- ¾ teaspoon baking soda
- pinch salt, optional and to taste
- 2 large eggs
- ¾ cup honey
- ¾ cup buttermilk
- ½ cup unsalted butter, 1 stick, softened
- ⅓ cup creamy peanut butter
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Streusel
- ¾ cup light brown sugar, packed
- ½ cup creamy peanut butter
- 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
Instructions
- For the Cake – Preheat oven to 350F. Line a 9-by-13-inch baking pan with aluminum foil and spray with cooking spray, or grease and flour the pan; set aside.
- In a large mixing bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and optional salt.
- Add the eggs, honey, buttermilk, butter, 1/3 cup peanut butter, vanilla, and beat with an electric mixer on medium-low for about 1 minute. Stop, scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl, and beat for 1 more minute.
- Turn batter out into prepared pan; set aside.
- For the Streusel – In the same mixing bowl (no need to wash it), combine brown sugar, 1/2 cup peanut butter, flour, and stir with a spoon until sandy pebbles form.
- Stir in the chocolate chips.
- Sprinkle streusel evenly over cake batter.
- Bake for about 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, or with a few moist crumbs, but no batter. Allow cake to cool completely in pan on a wire rack. Lift cake out using foil overhang, slice and serve. Cake is best fresh, but will keep airtight at room temperature for up to 4 days, or in the freezer for up to 6 months.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
©averiecooks.com. Content and photographs are copyright protected. Sharing of this recipe is both encouraged and appreciated. Copying and/or pasting full recipes to any social media is strictly prohibited.
Related Recipes:
Cinnamon Roll Coffee Cake with Cream Cheese Glaze
Blueberry and Jam Buttermilk Coffee Cake with Buttery Vanilla Glaze
Cookie Butter Brown Sugar Streusel Bars
Mango and Sour Cream Muffins with Streusel Topping
Spiced Apple Banana Bundt Cake with Vanilla Caramel Glaze – One of my favorite glazes of all time
French Almond Cookie Cake with Apricot Cream Cheese Glaze
Thanks for the entries in the Kitchen Aid 5-Quart Stand Mixer Giveaway!
Since my blog makeover, I’ve been told that my comment replies are going into spam. Please check your spam folder and un-spam them if necessary. Thanks!
Do you have a favorite cake recipe?
What’s your go-to recipe to bring to a potluck?
This combo sounds fantastic. I bought buttermilk just to make this cake! Do you think this recipe would work well in muffin tins? Thanks!!
I think that sounds like a total pain in the butt, to be honest! In theory it would work; but it’s way more work for you! Individual items, filling all the wells, then having to top them all with crumble bits, then getting them out – honestly unless you had a super special reason why you had to make them as muffins, just bake as directed in the cake pan.
Plus, it will be moister baked as a cake rather than muffins. LMK how it goes!
Oh goodness, this looks amazing! I would so get addicted to this ;)
Peanut butter, honey, buttermilk…streusel! (And only one bowl to clean!) Yes, please. :D
This cake is a work of art!
Work of art…as I blush, but thank you! And for the pin, too! :)
So jealous of all the lucky people at Big Potluck who got to try this! I love the idea of a pb honey cake sweetened only with honey and um yeah omg chocolate chips
I can only imagine the amount of pressure you felt, but you went above and beyond… this cake sounds phenomenal!!
Yes, it was like studying for finals. Except I was cooking for foodies :)
I would have been feeling the pressure too if 100+ foodies were going to eat my cake. I think you represented, though. This cake looks delicious!
Yes, it was like studying for finals. Except I was cooking for foodies. No pressure or anything :)
Looks like another home run recipe, Averie. Buttermilk certainly does work a magic in breads and cakes…Like your cinnamon crusted bread which I made and turned out great! Thank you for your do-able and delicious recipes =)
So happy to hear you made the cinnamon crusted bread and it turned out great! Thanks for LMK!
All I can say is WOW. Seriously, this sounds like something I would make and then eat all of and then have to fib about how I dropped it on the ground and that’s what happened to the rest of it because it’s not like I ate the entire thing by myself in one sitting. Nope not at all.
I am DEFINITELY making this the next time my lady friends and I have a shindig, it looks amazing!
Well if you try it, please LMK! And you can totally pass it off as a slave-away kind of cake, but it takes 5 mins :)
Oh yum!!! Do you think that recipe could successfully be cut in half to yield 9″ square cae?
I think you’d be safe! The other thing is that it would probably freeze just fine; make the whole thing, and keep half out, freeze the other half (well-wrapped in clingwrap and put inside a ziplock bag is how I freeze cakes/brownies). LMK if you try it!
I simply can’t handle the streusel topping on this beautiful cake! Like, why bother with the cake, just sit there with a spoon and eat all the toppings off! I can’t believe you were able to restrain nibbles while you were photographing! Tough cookie! This is a fantastic choice for a potluck and I am sure it was a huge hit. I am so making this! YUM!
It was so hard to refrain!
Looks beautiful Averie! I love anything that calls for a heaping of streusel topping!
This is a lovely stunner Averie! I love the honey and peanut butter. It doesn’t get better than that.
Sounds totally heavenly! This is one I will have to make right away. :)
well, it looks as if you were up to the challenge; what a cake
I see this on my breakfast table sometime soon
Oh gosh Averie – now I want to make another buttermilk cake! lol Peanut butter??? I love that addition. And streusel is definitely my favorite topping for cake. I tend to pick it off to eat it all as well … bad habit : )
Yep! This was the cake I mentioned! Glad you saw it!
So glad to see this, Averie! I saw pictures of it from others that attended Big Potluck and was in anticipation of getting the recipe. The streusel on a cake instead of frosting – such a fun idea!
Really?! You saw it! Well, that’s cool! And here it is :) The only post I had seen of it was Amanda’s!