Raspberry Chocolate Fudge Cake

Today is my parents' 25th wedding anniversary and I wanted to give them something no one else could. Well, my brother and I gave them a gift card to Red Lobster, because my mom loves it, but that wasn't really what I wanted to give them. I didn't really know what to do. And then it hit me.

What do I do well that I love to do? BAKE!

So I made them a cake while they were at dinner. It couldn't be an average cake, you understand; 25 years deserves something better than a vanilla cake with fudge frosting.

This is an adaption of a cake from a Betty Crocker cookbook, and it really looks great.

Unfortunately, I had a bit of a cake failure. You'll see it in a picture shortly.

On another note, it's Something On Your Head Day, so I wore a hat today! I love hats, but my hair disagrees with me, so I wear them infrequently.

Ingredients:
1 box chocolate fudge cake mix
1 1/3 cups water
1 stick butter, softened
3 eggs
2 1/6 cups mini chocolate chips
3 cups heavy whipping cream
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1 1/2 cups fresh raspberries
1/3 cup seedless raspberry preserves

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Beat the cake mix, water, butter, and eggs for about a minute.

Stir in 2/3 cup chocolate chips.

Divide between two cake pans (I used 9") as evenly as possible and bake for at least 30 minutes. I should have left one of them in for about two more minutes.

Yeah... The bigger one broke, completely ruining the awesomeness of the cake. It was supposed to be 4 layers, but since I had a big fail, it had to be 2. So, I will remake this and do it right, and in another recipe post someday, you will see a picture of the cake correctly. Look out for it!

While it was in the oven, I made some dinosaurs and ate them. Just so you know how I pass my time.

The cake has to cool for about an hour before you can play with it, so start mixing up the filling and the frosting. Mix 1 cup of the fresh raspberries and the preserves in one bowl and let it just hang out for a bit.

In a cold metal bowl (which helps the cream stiffen up faster), beat the cream and the powdered sugar for about 5 minutes, until soft peaks have formed. After taking out a cup and a half of the cream, put it in the fridge to stay cold until the hour is up. When you take it back out, beat it again, because the cream at the bottom will have unstiffened a bit.

Mix that cup and a half of the cream mixture and add it to the raspberry mixture. After combining it, also store in the fridge until the cake is cool.

If you were more talented than I was, your cake could look better than this. You would cut each round in half, creating four layers of cake instead of two and you would slather filling in between each of them, and the cover it with the whipped cream, topping with raspberries and putting chocolate chips around the sides and the base. If you failed, like I did, it would look something like this.

Whew, it was a bad day. Demonstrated by the mess that happened when I tried to clean the cream bowl. So, pretty much, I wish I could start today over again and do it better. It was the day where I bought the final things I need for college; that was hard. It's also difficult to understand that in a ten days, I will be incapable of posting more than mug cakes and microwaved-pasta until Thanksgiving.

I thought I was coping well with this whole leaving thing. Now I'm not so sure. But I have a rule, and that rule is to not end a post on a sad note. So!

Happy Something On Your Head Day! Keep stirring, loves!