1. Home
  2. Recipe Box

Homemade Peanut Squares Recipe

Here’s my all-time favorite Peanut Squares Recipe.

I remember 40 years ago, eating these – soft, white cake squares with fluffy white frosting and rolled in nuts.  It is a bakery staple in the Midwest.

Peanut Squares Recipe - small white cake squares, frosted and rolled in finely chopped nuts. A bakery staple in the Midwest. Heaven. #misshomemade

Best Peanut Squares Recipe

If you have a favorite white cake, please use that recipe if you wish.  If you don’t have time to make a cake, see below…

EASY WHITE CAKE RECIPE

2-3/4 cups cake flour
4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt

Meringue:
4 egg whites
1-1/2 cups powdered sugar, sifted

3/4 cup butter, softened
1-1/2 cups milk
2 tsp pure vanilla extract

PREHEAT oven to 350 degrees. Grease 9×13 inch pan** and dust the inside with flour and tap out excess. Line the bottom of the pan with wax or parchment paper. Put the cake pan on a baking sheet. 

Measure sifted flour, baking powder, and salt and sift together three times. IMPORTANT to follow these steps.

Cream butter and add remaining 1 cup sugar; creaming together until light and fluffy. Add sifted ingredients alternately with milk a small amount at a time, beating after each addition until smooth. Mix in flavorings and set aside.

In a mixing bowl, beat egg whites until foamy. Add 1/2 cup sugar gradually, and continue beating only until meringue will hold up in soft peaks and beat thoroughly into the cake batter. Spread evenly into prepared cake pan.

Bake for 25-30 minutes or when a knife inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Transfer to a rack and cool for 5 minutes, then run a knife around the sides of the cakes, unmold and peel off the paper liners.

Invert and cool to room temperature, right side up. (These cooled cakes may be wrapped airtight and stored at room temperature overnight or frozen for up to two months.)  To make perfect squares, you need to slice off the risen part of the cake in the middle so the cake is perfectly square before cutting into individual portions.

Cut into approximately 24 squares and put in the freezer for at least one hour.  It’s so much easier to frost when you do. 

Here’s frosting for the peanut squares recipe.

**If you want to make more, double the recipe and use a jelly roll pan to bake the cake in.

FROSTING

7-1/2 cups homemade powdered sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tsp homemade pure vanilla extract
scant 2/3 cup milk
1/2 cup butter, softened

Fisher nuts topping (finely chopped nuts in ice cream section) I should of chopped the nuts in the photo smaller; they were to big.

In a medium bowl, combine sugar and salt. Add vanilla and butter.  Mix and add enough milk to make a thin frosting. Frost entire square and immediately roll in peanuts. Place on wire racks to harden.  Store in the refrigerator.

 

IN A HURRY?

Buy a white cake from the bakery area of a grocery store (kind they frost for birthdays) and keep the cake in the refrigerator so it’s not too soft to frost.  Cut the cake into squares and make the frosting for them (recipe above).  Frost and keep in the refrigerator until ready to eat.

Best Cookie Recipes from Scratch

Perfectly Decadent Brownie Recipes

Great Bar Recipes