Chocolate Turtle Cake




Today we're celebrating the 3 year blogiversary of Vegetarian & Cooking!




I cannot believe it's been another year. This year saw a lot of changes to the format of the website, as well as a lot more original posts. I spent almost the entire year as a solo blogger for the first time since the inception of the blog, however, I certainly couldn't have done this without a lot of help from Dave and some photography support from Kayla.

As the blog continues into year 4 I can only hope for more opportunities for Vegetarian & Cooking! as well as myself. This continues to be a wonderful hobby for me and I expect only great things from here.






Adapted from The Cake Blog, photos by Kayla.

Ingredients:
-Cooking spray
-Unsweetened cocoa
-1 (18.25-oz.) package devil’s food cake mix
-1 (3.9-oz.) package chocolate instant pudding mix
-3 large eggs
-11/4 cups milk
-1 cup canola oil
-1 tablespoon vanilla extract
-1 (6-oz.) package semisweet chocolate morsels
-1 cup chopped pecans
-1 (16-oz.) container ready-to-spread cream cheese frosting
-1/2 cup canned dulce de leche
-1 package Take-5 bars
-1 (12-oz.) jar caramel ice-cream topping
-1/4 cup pecan halves, toasted

To make the cake layers:

Prepare two 9 inch cake pans by spraying them with cooking spray and dusting them with cocoa powder.

Beat cake mix, instant pudding mix, eggs, milk, oil and vanilla extract at low speed with an electric mixer for 1 minute.  Beat at medium speed 2 minutes. Then fold in chocolate morsels and chopped pecans.  Pour batter into prepared pans.


Bake at 350 for 30-32 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Allow to cool slightly in the pan, then flip the cake onto wire racks to finish the cooling process.

While the cake is cooling prepare your frosting, mix the cream cheese frosting with the dulce de leche.

Once the cake layers are cool, assemble your cake. Start with a base layer. Top generously with the caramel frosting, you want to use about half. Add the other cake layer and top with the remaining frosting.  Add the remaining pecans as well as the Take 5 bars to the top. Drizzle with caramel.


 















This cake was about as decadent as they come (YES, Dave and I are still abiding by our New Year's resolution of being healthier, NO, I will not tell you how many calories are in a piece of this lovely cake, you don't want to know). The caramel cream cheese frosting was creamy and full of flavor, the color contrasted nicely with the chocolate cake layers. I know exposed cake layers are all the rage, It really did make for quite a pretty cake. I decided to use Take-5 bars on top because that was the closest thing I could find to candy turtles at the store. Overall, I was very, very happy with how this turned out. Cheers to another year! 

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