4-14-2011 Chocolate Chip Cake

Tomorrow night I am making a Shabbat dinner to celebrate a dear friend's birthday. She wants to keep it low key, and not make a big deal of her birthday.  Well sorry, (Sue) I love birthdays, and of course I am going to make a big deal to celebrate yours.

I have been hounding her all week to tell me her favorite foods, so I can make an extra special dinner. I'll post about the dinner tomorrow. One food my friend is obsessed with is chocolate chips, particularly cold ones (kind of strange.) So, I'm going to make her a chocolate chip birthday cake, and then store it in the refrigerator.

The recipe I'm using involves a cake mix. I don't understand why cake mixes have a bad rap. Personally, I love them, they always turn out perfectly moist, and incredibly delicious. Although, I do still bake scratch cakes every so often, cake mixes are nice when you are short on time.

I remember when I took my first cake decorating class, and the teacher told us a story about how they did a research project to figure out if people liked cake mix cake or from scratch cake better. The results were astounding, every single person in the study liked cake mix cake better.

I'll post a picture of the finished cake tomorrow.

Chocolate Chip Cake

This awesome cake is versatile because it can be baked in a bundt pan, a tube pan, 2- 8 or 9 inch pans, or as cupcakes. You can get creative with what flavor cake mix and pudding you choose.

1 Yellow Cake Mix, Duncan Hines only
1 (3.4 oz) box Jello Pudding Vanilla Flavor Powder
1 C. water
4 eggs
1/3 C. vegetable oil
1 (12 oz.) bag chocolate chips
1 T. flour

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Grease the baking pan/s of your choice.
In a large bowl mix with an electric mixer, mix the cake mix, pudding powder, water, eggs, and oil for 2 minutes. Scraping down the bowl as necessary.
In a small bowl toss the chocolate chips with the flour (This prevents them from falling to the bottom). Mix them into the cake batter.
Pour batter into baking pan.

Bake for:

 Tube or Bundt Pan- 50-60 minutes, or when a cake tester or tooth pick is inserted, it comes out clean

Layer Cake Pan- 8 inch: 33-36 minutes, 9 inch: 28-31 minutes, or when the cake is starting to pull away from the sides

Cupcakes- 18-21 minutes, or when you press the center it springs right back.

After removing from the oven, let warm cake stand in the pan for 10-15 minutes. Then remove from pan, and place onto a cooling rack. DO NOT FROST, until completely cook.

Use Frosting of your choice. I will probably use the Duncan Hines Whipped Chocolate Frosting.
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Cannot wait to eat a piece of this! I bet Sue is going to be excited. Pin It