This isn't a big deal, but I want to make my own birthday cake...I'd like to do banana cake, chocolate filling and cover it in peanut butter frosting. I don't want to "waste" fondant on myself, plus I'm not a fan of the taste.
Has anyone tried to color it? I know it's already a tan color...I'd like it to either be light orange, yellow, light blue, light green...something other than tan. I saw someone who tried to make it purple ended up getting grey (looks good though!) http://kitchenbelle.com/2009/11/01/mini-chocolate-cupcakes-with-silver-peanut-butter-frosting/
I'm guessing there's a bit of yellow in the frosting, since it turned the purple color to grey? So maybe I'd be limited to orange/yellow/green? I have no idea.
Anyone tried this? What color did you want/what color did you end up with?

Thanks!

I haven't tried this, but I'm a big fan of peanut butter anything (I made a cake filling the other day by adding peanut butter to my ganache and it was to die for), so I think it would be a GREAT idea! You're right about having to work around the original color of the peanut butter - I guess it's like working around the yellow of the butter in all-butter buttercream - but it would be SO worth it! In other words, maybe no light blue, but, like you say, golds, oranges, browns and even blacks would be the order of the day (I'm thinking of a nice autumn theme). If you do this, PLEASE let me know how it works out!

Bell Plantation makes a powered peanut butter...would that help? My local health food store carries it but I'm sure it's more widely available.

Wow, I've never heard of that. Sounds like something useful. I wonder if you can get it in Mexico (shipping from outside requires the payment of a hefty tariff and I'm not sure you can do it at all with anything edible).

You dont even have to worry about tinting the peanut butter buttercream a color. Whenever I want the outside of a cake to be another color I just take vanilla buttercream and tint it the color that I want. I apply a thin layer of colored icing over my regular iced cake. It's very thin but opaque. That way when you cut it open you will have your regular thick layer of peanut butter icing and a thin layer of you color icing on the outside. With this technique you can even do a solid red or black cake. You dont have to worry about the taste of dye or tinting the flavored buttercream the right color.

Hope this helps.

I color PB icing all the time. It obviously looks a little bit different than if you were coloring white icing, but it's not that noticable.

Thanks for the responses! I normally get e-mail notifications, but I didn't get any for this post...I thought I was being neglected!

I'll play around with it...I was thinking of just making the frosting and taking little spoons of it, putting them in separate bowls, and tinting them with different colors to see what happens. Then I can just go with whatever I like! I'll keep you all posted....but my birthday isn't until mid-April. I like to plan ahead...especially when it comes to cakes!

I like the idea of covering in buttercream so that I don't have to bother with this experiment (and maybe the cake won't smell so peanut buttery), but I don't want that flavor to take away from my banana/chocolate/PB combo...

Would peanut butter frosting be harder to get smooth? I've never used it to decorate with before. I whip it a good amount of time so that it's pretty smooth and creamy...I imagine it would be fine.

I used to work in a bakery where peanut butter was one of the buttercream selections. It's was thicker than the other flavors so that made it difficult to get a flawless cake with it. You don't have to worry about the flavor if doing the thin exterior icing method. It's for visual effect. The only way you taste it is if it is apply it too thick (should be no thicker than a piece of cardboard) or you deliberatley lick it off. We used this method to do more creative cakes and not have to worry about the flavor or the look of the icing throwing off the design.

Hm...thanks for the info! I may try that, since I've been wanting the buttercream to be light blue, and I couldn't achieve that with the PB...

But now I'm wondering if I should change my flavors all-together...The banana cake recipe is one that I use for cupcakes, and it's sooo delicious (thanks, Martha)...but it's really soft. The only tiered cake I've ever made (thus far) was 4 inches tall...so I'm new to this. I do want it to be a small cake--maybe like a 6 inch bottom tier and a 4 inch top tier--since it'll probably be just me, my boyfriend and a few friends, but I don't know if a cake that soft would stand up, even with dowels?

If you make sure that your top tier has a base (the exact size of the tier) and the dowels or straws from the bottom tier are under this base, you should have no problem. When the cake is assembled that way, the bottom tier is not actually taking the weight of the top tier - the dowels/straws are.

Cool, I was thinking about that last night but wasn't 100% sure if it would work since I've never tried it before. Thanks!