Every week we’ll post a recipe that we both made. This week’s recipe was Best Chocolate Cupcakes Ever. Printable recipe can be found at the bottom of this post. The recipe was submitted by Penny, who adapted it from a Nestle recipe card.

Robyn’s Take:

This week’s recipe was submitted by Penny, who adapted it from a Nestle recipe card she got a few years ago (which it says right up there in the beginning of this post, so I don’t know why I feel the need to tell y’all again. But I am! So there!)

Your ingredients: chocolate fudge cake mix with pudding in the mix, instant chocolate pudding, sour cream, corn oil (Penny says any vegetable oil will do, but she thinks corn oil gives it the best flavor), eggs, chocolate chips. Not shown: warm water.

This is a very difficult and technical recipe, so PLEASE just TRY to follow along, okay?

Throw everything in a mixing bowl.

Mix it.

If you’re a total klutz like me, you might accidentally bump the switch to the mixer so that some of the stuff in the bowl goes splashing out onto the counter.

Just scrape it up the best you can, and toss it back in the bowl. I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.

Now, this recipe is meant for cupcakes, but I am OVER cupcakes. I am useless when it comes to making them the same size, and I have a hell of a time getting them out of the tin in one piece (and don’t even get me started on those damn cupcake liners, which I HATE peeling off of cupcakes because half the damn cupcake peels off with the liner, grrrr.) Cupcakes are just not my thing, is what I’m saying – although if YOU want to make me cupcakes and have better skills in that area than I do, you should certainly feel free to do just that.

So I made a cake instead, in a Bundt pan – lucky for me, Penny had included the baking time for a cake as well as for cupcakes.

Lookit those scrumptious chocolate chips.

Penny recommended using a cream cheese flavor frosting. I was going to just go ahead and use my Best Buttercream Frosting instead. But then I decided to ask Fred what he wanted, because sometimes I like to let him think he has a choice when it comes to that sort of thing. He wanted chocolate frosting, so FINE. Chocolate frosting it was – I just used the Best Buttercream Frosting recipe, added 1/2 c. Hershey’s Cocoa Powder, and an additional splash of heavy cream, and it was perfect.

And the verdict? Oh, holy cow. This is a damn good cake! It was perfectly moist, perfectly flavorful – and I don’t know what it is about the texture of chocolate chips in a cake that is SUPER EXTRA AWESOME good, but it was the perfect touch to this recipe. This recipe’s going into the recipe box (when I get around to it, so… sometime in 2020), and I’ll definitely be making it again!

My rating: phenomenal. Fred’s rating: “really good, but you know, I don’t like chocolate cake as much as you do, so” (and then I tuned him out.)

“You keep making recipes that I can’t eat, and I’m about to take that personally, stupid lady.”

Thanks for the submission, Penny!

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Have a recipe you want us to make? Check out this page (there’s also a link to that page up there under the banner) and follow the instructions to submit a recipe!

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Nance’s Take:
You should probably know that Robyn and I discussed this recipe at the beginning of the week (we were talking about how I would be late-again).  This is exactly what was said regarding this recipe (cut and pasted from emails)…

Nance: Did you make the actual cupcakes – when I saw that she said you could make a bundt cake – I did that. NO FUSSING!

Robyn: Ha – it looks like we’re both cupcake haters! I made the Bundt cake, too. I’m not skilled enough to make cupcakes. Either I make some way too small and some way too big, or I drip batter all over the damn tin. Drives me nuts!

Nance: ROBYN – GOD DAMMIT

I cannot believe you made the BUNDT cake.

Robyn: This is just like all those damn times when you say something and I say the exact same thing! No one who reads us is going to be the slightest bit surprised that we both made the cake! 😀

So now you know why Robyn and I were never Scout Leaders or voted President of the PTA. We just cannot be counted on to bring the damn cupcakes.

Making this was a piece of cake (har-dee-har), but I have to admit that I was a little bit concerned about how thick this got when I was mixing it. It should probably be noted that I chose to use a sugar-free cake mix and sugar-free pudding. I don’t think they make sugar-free chocolate chips. I should correct that and say that I probably wouldn’t buy sugar-free chocolate chips anyway. Oh hell, I only bought the sugar-free cake mix because it was on sale and the pudding so Diabetic Rick could have it as a snack. Fuck sugar-free. It’s all POISON anyway.

I might be losing my mind a little bit here. Please ignore.

Felina is concerned about my mental well-being and the fact that I have so much sugar-free shit in my home. Please note the huge can of Crisco in the background. We’re not that healthy around here.

This bundt pan is beat to fuck, but I love it and will never get rid of it. You know what drives me crazy? That mess of cake batter on the left side of the pan. Pisses me right the fuck off. NOTHING that I do in the kitchen is neat and/or tidy. I have tried a million times to cook like those women that are comfortable in the kitchen and it always ends up looking like raccoons were having a bake sale.

Here, look at The Beagle’s ass instead of my gross pan.

I thought those cracks were going to make this cake a huge fail.

But when I turned it over it came out okay.

I didn’t bother to wait for it to cool before I started slicing it. I should have waited so the chocolate chips could have firmed-up a bit. We tried it when it was warm and, of course, everybody loved it. It’s freaking chocolate-chocolate cake! I also liked the fact that I didn’t have to make frosting for it.

I don’t have anything else to say so here’s a picture of Felina rolling her tongue. Weird, huh?