Doctored Chocolate Cake from a Mix

This has been a cooking week.  I try to keep desserts around the house and my family has a fondness for chocolate.   I get a ton of cake mixes for very little $$$ using coupons.  But I think a cake mix just with oil, eggs and water tastes boring.  You can, however, doctor it up and make it taste gourmet.

I start my cakes with a mix (almost free with coupon) then doctor them with other ingredients to make them taste purely homemade.  These are so good I cannot justify doing it totally from scratch.   Some of the best ingredients to use in cake doctoring are mayonnaise, buttermilk and sour cream.  This week I used mayonnaise.  It is a great use for mayo if you need to rotate this item through your pantry before it expires.

One of my favorite cook books is “the cake doctor”.  Here’s a recipe similar to the one I used from my cookbook, mine also had vanilla as an ingredient.

I almost never use store bought icing b/c I can taste the difference between this and homemade.  If you save time with a cake mix, then use the extra to make frosting from scratch.  It will make all the difference.  For the icing I used two use dark chocolate bars (thanks for leaving these Melissa), butter and powder sugar.   The icing was too sweet for me, but the family thought it was great.  We had extra icing, so we also dipped strawberries… yum yum.

Check out this cake:  And see www.lifeasmom.com for other great cakes.