The Lucky Dime and Chocolate Butterscotch Cake

Birthdays are a BIG deal in our house. The honored family member has a say in just about everything to do with the special day. The most important question is, surprisingly, not about presents. It is “What type of cake do you want?”

Happily, my kids have a broad palate when it comes to birthday cakes. We’ve done carrot, spice, lemon, and marbled. There was even a year when we bought ‘birthday cake’ flavored ice cream and stuck some candles in it. 

Poor Casey — not my proudest parenting moment, but with an infant in the house it was the best I could do!

For Zach’s 12th birthday, he requested chocolate chip cake – a favorite recipe dubbed the “Keaton cake” after the family that first shared the recipe with us.  A yellow cake enhanced with milk chocolate and semi-sweet chocolate, it satisfies both the Chocolate freaks and Vanilla fans at our house. At baking time, though, I discovered we didn’t have the usual ingredients on hand.  I went with a chocolate-butterscotch combo instead, reminiscent of my favorite Dairy Queen order – chocolate soft serve with butterscotch dip.

As always, the cake was extremely moist and devilishly tasty, and the butterscotch-chocolate combo was awesome.  Nobody got the ‘lucky dime’ I hid in the cake (a birthday tradition on my mom’s Irish-English side), so we’ll all be hanging around the cake plate tomorrow!

This recipe has never failed me.  Enjoy it as written here, or with the original ingredients — semi-sweet chips and grated milk chocolate,  a great combination that reminds me of warm Toll House cookies. It is great naked (i.e. without frosting) as well as glazed, like below.

Enjoy!

Chocolate Butterscotch Cake
Serves 12

4 oz. semi sweet chocolate (like Baker’s) 
1 pkg. yellow cake mix
1 pkg. instant vanilla pudding
1 cup lowfat milk
3/4 c. vegetable oil
2 eggs plus 2 egg whites
1 cup butterscotch chips

1) Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
2) Grease well (with shortening or butter, not pan spray) AND flour a 10-inch tube pan.
3) Grate semi-sweet chocolate (by hand or with food processor). Set aside.
4) Place cake mix, pudding mix, milk, oil and eggs in large mixing bowl.  Blend on low 1 minute, scraping sides. Stop mixer, and add grated chocolate. Beat for 2 more minutes. Fold in butterscotch chips.
5) Pour batter into prepared pan.
6) Bake for 60-70 minutes — until cake is golden brown and cake tester inserted one inch from center comes out clean.
7) Let sit in pan twenty minutes before inverting to plate to cool completely.
8) Top with chocolate glaze, if desired, as below.

Satiny Chocolate Glaze
(from Allrecipes.com)

3/4 c. semi-sweet chocolate chips
3 T. butter
1 T. light corn syrup
1/4 t. vanilla

Place chocolate, butter and corn syrup in the top of a double boiler. Stir over hot, but not boiling water, until ingredients are combined smoothly. Remove from heat, then add vanilla.  Cool slightly, then drizzle over cake while the glaze is still warm.