It's a Keeper

M saw a picture of the Chocolate Chip Swirl Cake on the boxes of cake mixes, and said, "I want you to make this for me sometime."  One thing you have to understand about M, he doesn't eat sweet stuff very often.  When I make cake or something, if he eats any of it he only eats one piece.  Moving on... I recently made his Chocolate Chip Swirl Cake (www.bettycrocker.com), but I of course had to put my own spin on it for a few reasons 1) it's what I do and 2) lack of resources.  Below is what I did different than the recipe as well as a picture of the cake, not the one I made though because well... just keep reading and you'll find out why.

1. I had an open bag of generic chocolate chips with just a few left.  I have no idea how much was left, but I just dumped all of it into the batter.
2. I used vanilla cake mix rather than white, and I added my special ingredients that I always use when baking from a mix.
3. Rather than reserving some batter and mixing the chocolate ice cream syrup into that, I just drizzled the syrup on top and swirled it in with a butter knife.
4. I got the GENIUS idea to swirl caramel syrup into the batter as well.  I'm not a big chocolate fan, but if I am going to eatch chocolate I love love love to have caramel with it.
5. That gave me another idea... why not make caramel frosting to put on top?  I was going to do buttercream because lets face it, in my world can frosting isn't real frosting; the only time I use it is when I make my Oreo cake (maybe I'll tell you about that sometime).  So I make caramel buttercream frosting (http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/butterscotch-caramel-buttercream-frosting-10000001879940/ - thanks Pinterest!)
6. For the frosting, I learned to ignore the recipe a little and cream the butter by itself first so that it wouldn't be chunky.
7. I love love love caramel, so I just poured in the caramel syrup until I reached the desired caramel flavor I was looking for.
8. To top off the frosting, after I spread the frosting on I drizzled chocolate syrup on top (as previously mentioned I didn't have chocolate chips left for the frosting).  I then proceded to swirl the syrup in with a knife (don't do that, just leave it as it is).

The results were yummy, yummy, yummy!  It was moist, not too much chocolate (my opinion), and the frosting was perfect.  The chocolate chips all settled to the bottom, so I think I will try mini chocolate chips next time; I may even try chocolate sprinkles.

Why didn't I post the picture of my own cake?  Well you see... we shared our cake with some friends.  As we left their house, M was caring the cake pan by the handle on the top of the lid.  For some reason, the handle decided to pop out, which make the pan land lid side down one the floor.  (CAKE DOWN!!!)  No worries though, the cake was not wasted.  It was actually devoured!