holy cake

well, that's HOLEY cake, actually.

i have to introduce you to a spectacular chocolate cake my family enjoyed over last weekend at a joint birthday celebration for mitchell, my dad, and our friend marty. marty's wife sue made it and wowed us all, and i was pleasantly surprised to find a few variations on the concept online.

the general gist of it is that you make a storebought cake mix as directed (my kind of baking), and when it's done and still hot, you poke several holes in the top and pour sweetened condensed milk and chocolate syrup into the holes. it seeps into the center of the cake by way of the holes and creates just the moistest, most fudgy cake in the world. in sue's case, she made it a couple days in advance and it worked out deliciously - i guess it had plenty of time to moisten and thank goodness it did. then right before serving, she spread whipped cream on top, but based on the recipes i link to below, you could also use frosting or pretty much anything. i think it's one of those "can't really go wrong" deals.

what i like about this concept, among other things, is that it's simple to do, and uses the well-chosen shortcut of a storebought cake mix. now, i know lots of serious bakers don't do that because...well, because they're serious bakers and they feel that the difference in taste and quality is worth the extra time and labor, but i'm telling you, because of how it's doctored, it's anything but ordinary tasting.

referred to here as the "better than s-- cake" (why they can't write out sex, i'm not sure), about.com offers variations for sweet lovers of all kinds - chocolate, caramel, frosting, and candy. i found some other cakes with similar concepts too - am i the last to know about this fantabulous idea? here is a mexican version, the tres leches cake, and here's a version with heath bars and butterscotch syrup. it's called "almost better than sex cake." i do like how they take care to say almost.

and this version, called the coconut poke cake uses coconut milk and shredded coconut with a white cake mix. oooh i bet you could add pineapple and it would be like a pina colada flavor.

okay, this could go on all day. i don't know if i'll ever bake a different kind of cake again.