Cheater Chocolate Cake

I have a good friend who has many wonderful gifts. Detailed planning is not one of them. So it didn’t surprise me all that much when he called me yesterday and told me that he was putting together a small birthday get-together for his wife the next day. Or when I asked him if he had a birthday cake and he responded, “Yeah, I should probably get one.”

Birthday cakes are a big deal with me. And I have to say birthday cakes are one of those areas where moms frequently get the short end of the stick. It’s not anyone’s fault; it’s just something that tends to get missed – kind of like how most family pictures have photos of the kids and dad and the kids and very few of mom and the kids. Like family photos, moms are usually in the driver’s seat with birthday cakes.

With that in mind, and the fact that the birthday girl in question is a saint, I offered to make a cake. (Note: she is married to the youth director at our church, something I keep expecting to show up on the TV series “Dirty Jobs.” Youth director spouses get roped into all sorts of stuff the rest of us would rather fall out of a plane than do - like teaching Sunday School, making a dozen egg bakes for the Easter breakfast and cleaning up during the late shift of the Nordic Fest dinner. The woman is patience personified).

I am also blessed with gifts, but time and patience to make a homemade cake are neither of them. I know many people who are blessed with said gifts (and I have their numbers if you're interested), but I didn’t have time to ask them to make me one. So I’m sharing one of my best-kept recipe secrets: Cheater Chocolate Cake.

It’s pretty straightforward. It starts with mixes from Trader Joe’s (Pillsbury, Duncan Hines and their contemporaries will work, but TJ’s cake mixes are super chocolaty) and one or two extras. Here’s how it works:

•         Buy a chocolate cake mix from Trader Joe’s. Mix it up (use butter instead of oil as it recommends on the box) and bake it in two pans. Let cool.
•         Mix up two packages (The box will say one batch will frost a two-layer cake, but that's if you're skimpy with frosting. I am not: with frosting, go big or go home) of Trader Joe’s white frosting mix.  You add your own butter and water and it whips up into buttercream perfection.
•         You don’t have time to decorate a cake. You’d like to, but the last time you got your decorating tips down from the top cupboard it was long before Christmas, and even then you put them away because the Santa cutouts would do just fine with red sugar, thank you very much. So wander around the store and find some fun cookies or candies that will fit the occasion. I found these fun flower cookies – frosted animal crackers, nonpareils, crushed Oreos, and a host of other things will work. Use your imagination.
•         Frost the cake, add your toppings and fun candles. Voila.

Hey, it’s not going to make the Food Network. But it’s made with love, and that’s really what celebrating birthdays is all about.