Recipe: Cream Cheese Chocolate Cake*

I was thinking today how we are creatures of habit when it comes to food.  I for one usually order the same thing each time I eat at a favorite restaurant, and at home I tend to rely on the same recipes over and over again.  If a recipe turns out consistently well and everyone enjoys it, it gets made many times through the years, until finally no one can remember when it started or where it came from—they just know they can’t live without it (as attested to by grown children who call home from lands afar to ask Mom how to make it!)

Desserts are not really my specialty, but I have one favorite that’s pretty much committed to memory.  It’s called simply Cream Cheese Chocolate Cake.   Made from a cake mix and a handful of other ingredients, it’s one of the easiest cake recipes ever.  I’ve made it for years and everyone loves it.  It’s perfect for a birthday, because when you frost and decorate it, it looks like an ordinary cake--then everyone is surprised when they bite into the rich pockets of cream cheese and chocolate that they weren’t expecting.  I cannot emphasize enough that it needs to be kept in the fridge until ready to serve (and after as well--if there are leftovers), both because of the cream cheese and because it just tastes better that way.  
1 Chocolate Fudge or Devil’s Food Cake Mix

8 oz package cream cheese, softened

¼ cup milk

2 Tablespoons Sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 pkg. semi-sweet Chocolate Chips

1    Make Cake Mix as instructed on box.

2    Grease and flour an oblong glass cake pan.  Pour in chocolate cake batter.  Mix the rest of the ingredients well (with the mixer you already used) and place little dobs of this evenly with a small spoon all over the top of the cake batter in pan.  Bake as directed (check with toothpick).  Cool completely and frost.  Keep in fridge as it’s supposed to be served cold.

FROSTING:  I don’t really have a recipe.  The ingredients are butter, canned milk, unsweetened Hershey’s Cocoa, powdered sugar, salt, and vanilla.

Melt about 2/3 stick of butter in a medium saucepan.  Add about ¼ to 1/3 cup cocoa (depends on how dark you like it) and maybe 1/2 cup canned milk and mix together (take it off the heat at this point).

Then start adding powdered sugar directly into the pan and mixing with the electric mixer (if your pan will scratch with the beaters, move this to a bowl).  Put some salt in, like 3 or 4 hard shakes with the salt shaker.  Add more canned milk and powdered sugar alternately until you reach the desired consistency and amount of frosting you need for your cake.  Add a teaspoon or so of vanilla, and it’s ready.

*Originally distributed April 2014