The Random Thoughts Review

I made a cake for work earlier this week. People seemed to like it, so I thought I’d post the recipe.

Ingredients:
Duncan Hines Triple Chocolate Cake Mix (prepared)
Raspberry Jello
Smucker’s Simply Fruit (Red Raspberry, seedless)
Chocolate Cool Whip (8 ounce tub)
Hershey’s Premium Baking Bits Filled With Raspberry

I started with a triple chocolate cake mix and made it according to the directions on the box. I suspect that alterations could be made here with little damage. I had a Dark chocolate cake mix that I had thought about trying as well.

While the cake is cooking, prepare the jello. Boil the water, use the packet and add the cold water. Then, just leave the bowl of liquid jello sitting on the counter.

Once the cake has finished cooking, give it a couple of minutes to set, and start poking holes in the top. I used a toothpick, and put a hole about every half inch. Yes, it’s a lot of holes.

Then, pour the jello over the cake. Try to get it as even as possible. With the cake being warm, the jello will quickly drain into the cake, so you have to make sure to spread out the liquid over the entire cake. A spoon can help here to distribute the jello.

Then, set the cake in the fridge. I made the cake one evening about 11pm (I was bored). I let the cake sit in the fridge overnight uncovered, and in the morning I put a cover on the pan to retain moisture.

After the cake has had a chance to cool completely, run a knife along the edges of the pan and flip the cake over onto a serving platter. This could be tricky. On my cake, I had a section in the middle that stayed stuck in the cooking pan. I had to use a spatula to remove those sections and reform the expected “box” look of the cake.

Once I had the cake on the serving platter, I coated the cake with a layer of Smuckers Simply Fruit I think it was about an 8 ounce jar.

Then I put the cake back in the fridge to let the fruit maybe harden a little bit.

Meanwhile, I had the chocolate cool whip thawing in the refridgerator. Once the cool whip had completely thawed, I frosted the cake with the cool whip. You have to be careful here. The fruit doesn’t really harden much. It has the consistency of jam, so you have to be careful with the spatula to keep the fruit layer hidden from view. When you dollop a clump of whipped topping onto the cake, spread out from the clump to cover the cake. Don’t spread back in towards the dollop, or you’ll pick up the fruit on the spatula and end up turning the cool whip red. I used the entire 8 ounce tub of cool whip on the cake.

Then, to top it off, I used the baking bits. I can’t find a link for these on the web, but they come in a packet that looks just like a chocolate chip bag, and are probably in the same area of the store. When all is said and done, the cake ended up looking like the picture to the right.

There are a bunch of variations you could do on the cake. I had thought about going the chocolate/strawberry route, and I think it would have worked well. Most any fruit flavor would probably do well. Enjoy!

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