The names people choose for recipes often crack me up.
There’s the embarrassing-to-talk-about “better than sex” or “sex in a pan” variety of dishes, followed by “blue-ribbon” and “award-winning” options, and of course, there are a million recipes purporting to be “Mom’s” or “Grandma’s,” although few identify which matriarch those actually belong to.
So you’ll excuse my skepticism as to how “amazing” the recipe I tried this week was when the author simply called it “amazing cake.”
Upon reading the long list of ingredients, though, not only did I start to believe that this just might be amazing, but I also realized that she couldn’t have possibly come up with a more descriptive name without having to list at least five items in the title. Amazing cake it was.
This recipe comes from a Facebook reel by @genie_cooks. I adjusted the ingredients just a tiny bit, based on what I had in my pantry. I also used an Oreo chocolate cake mix that had Oreo bits in it for the cake part, and that was phenomenal.
Amazing Cake
Ingredients
- 1 cup pecans divided
- 1 cup shredded coconut
- 1 chocolate cake mix and ingredients listed on the box
- 8 ounces cream cheese
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 1/2 cup butter melted
- 1/2 cup chocolate chips I used semi-sweet
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- Prepare a nine-by-13-inch baking pan by spraying it with cooking spray.
- Spread one-half cup of the pecans and all of the shredded coconut evenly along the bottom of the pan. Set it aside.
- In a mixing bowl, prepare the chocolate cake mix according to the directions on the box. Pour the prepared mix evenly over the top of the pecans and coconut in the prepared pan.
- In another mixing bowl, beat the cream cheese, powdered sugar and melted butter until it is smooth. Fold in the remaining pecans and the chocolate chips.
- With a large spoon, place dollops of the cream cheese mixture all over the surface of the cake batter, and then gently swirl the cream cheese mixture into the batter with a knife.
- Bake for 35 to 40 minutes. Let the cake cool completely before cutting into it. Sore any leftovers in an airtight container.
This really did turn out, well, amazing. I brought some to the office to share, and Adam described it as a “German chocolate upside down cake,” which I thought was a fairly apt way of putting it. The incorporation of so many different flavors and textures in this cake makes it decadent and delicious, and the best part was that it was super easy to create. Put this one on your “I need to make a quick dessert” list.
While “amazing cake” doesn’t really tell you everything you need to know about this recipe, it was a decent descriptor after all, and I certainly recommend it. As for some of the other descriptive terms people tend to use in their recipe names, I think I’ll stick to the tamer adjectives. I don’t need my cooking to get a strange reputation.
This piece first appeared in print on April 20, 2023.
Spice Up Your Life is a weekly newspaper column written by Lindsey Young in south central Kansas. If you are interested in sponsoring this column, please contact us through the “Contact Lindsey” link at the top of the page.
