PB and Chocolate Bday Cake

I was wanting to try my hand at a little more fancy cake. My friend Sarah's Bday was coming up so I asked her to pick something...she went with an almost no-fail combo of chocolate cake and PB frosting. Like Reese's peanut butter cups on crack.

Few thoughts on the outcome:
1. I used 8" round pans but forgot to adjust the baking time...next time will decrease by about 5-10 min
2. Forgot to sift the flour, not sure this really made a huge difference, BUT...
3. Refrigerated cake (completed) day before, should've waited to assemble until the day of
4. Batter seemed extra thick, perhaps increasing buttermilk to thin it a bit
5. The icing required continuous thinning...kind of difficult to work with
So, summary, it looked great, just need to tweak some things about the recipe and my methods-the cake itself was a bit dense and dry.
Happy Birthday Sarah and thanks for allowing me to experiment!
Here's the process-

Cakes are baked, icing is made

cakes are levelled, spackled and lathered in PB frosting

decorating done, cake is complete! Sorry, I failed to get a picture of a slice of the cake...