Heavenly Cake

This cake is called "Heavenly Cake" for a few reasons. First, it's absolutely heavenly. Truly, it is. Second, you'll feel heavenly about all the complements you get when you take this cake places. Third, if you eat too much of it, you'll go to heaven way too soon - this is NOT a healthy recipe.



Heavenly cake is for those with a serious sweet tooth. It's a conglomeration of a few recipes I've been eyeing for a while. First I scoured the web for the perfect chocolate cake recipe. I checked out the sweet and salty cake and the better-than-sex cake. Both looked awesome, but I don't do toffee, and the S'n'S cake looked a little too fussy for my taste. Truth is, after about 6 ingredients, I lose interest and patience. So I used an old recipe I've had for a while. Then I added salted caramel sauce using this recipe as a jumping point. And some chocolate ganache.

Makes: ~ 20 servings

Ingredients:

Cake:

• bundt cake pan
• baking spray
• 1 box of your favorite chocolate cake mix
• 1 box of instant chocolate pudding
• 1 cup plain yogurt
• 1/2 cup canola oil
• 4 eggs
• 2 cups chocolate chips (I like 1 cup semi-sweet, 1 cup milk chocolate)
  

Salted Carmel Sauce:

• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 6 tbs. salted butter - yes, the 'salted' is important

Chocolate Ganache:

• 2 cups chocolate chips (again, I like 1 cup semi-sweet, 1 cup milk chocolate)
• 3/4 cup heavy cream

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Grease the inside of the bundt pan using a baking spray or with oil and flour.

3. See all those cake ingredients? Dump everything but the chocolate chips in a big mixing bowl. If you've got a stand mixer, even better.

4. Mix everything until the batter is moist all the way through.

5. Slowly add the chocolate chips to the batter.

6. Spoon the batter into the bundt pan making sure the batter is even in the pan. You don't want a lop-sided cake, here.

7. Bake the cake at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes. You can use the toothpick test to see if the cake is done, but remember there are chocolate chips in the cake.

8. Once the cake is done, cool it on a rack, then invert the pan onto a serving plate.

9. For the caramel sauce, use a two or three quart sauce pan. Anything smaller, and you risk the sauce bubbling over the sides of the pan and making a colossal mess. Trust me. Oh, and oven mitts are your friend here, this sugar is HOT.

10. Heat the sauce pan to medium-high heat, and add the sugar. Yes, it seems weird to be adding a solid and no liquid, but the solid will liquify shortly.

11. As the sugar melts, stir it to keep it from burning. If it does burn, toss it and start over. You can't undo burned sugar.

12. Once the sugar is completely melted, it should be a nice cozy brown color. Just a note here - the deeper the caramel color, the more bitter the sauce. If you want sweet, use a lower heat setting and melt the sugar slowly. If you like the savory, use higher heat. But be careful, there's a fine line between savory and burned.

13. This is where you add the butter. Just put the whole 6 tbs in at once. No need to add it gradually.

14. See how it bubbled up? This is why you are using a large sauce pan. Stir the butter and sugar together.

15. Now, add the heavy cream. Again, it bubbles. Just stir until the butter and cream are completely incorporated into the sugar. Set the sauce aside for a while to cool (~10 minutes) while you prepare the ganache.

16. For the ganache, add the two cups of chips to a sauce pan. Begin stirring while you heat the sauce pan over medium heat.

17. Once most of the chips are melted, stir in the heavy cream in 1/4 cup increments until you reach your desired pouring consistency.

18. Once your ganache is fully melted, pour it over the cake. You can reserve some for ice cream or coffee later. If you're fancier than me, you'll make a pretty drizzled design. I was hungry and just kind of dumped it all over.

19. To add the caramel sauce to the cake, simply pour the sauce slowly over the cake. The slower you go, the more sauce ends up on the cake. You'll have some left over, so again, save it for coffee or ice cream toppings.

Tips ‘n’ Tricks:

• Keep a gallon of milk handy when you serve this cake. And a lot of napkins.
• As tempting as it is, don't eat the caramel sauce right out of the sauce pan. You'll burn your tongue. Not that I'd know anything about that.
• Next time, I'm thinking I'll add the caramel sauce to the bottom of the cake before I remove it from the pan so it can soak into the cake (kind of like the glaze for rum cakes). Then I'll just add the ganache to the top of the cake. It might make it a little less messy.