Today is Rob’s birthday, so when I asked him what kind of cake he wanted, he said a giant hostess cupcake cake. I showed him some chocolate cake and he selected a mud cake from my Pinterest file. And my faithful companion, Gracie, was about 10 feet away, observing and hoping for a taste of something non-chocolate. As you can see my decorating skills leave much to be desired!

Cake ingredients

• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup baking cocoa
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup water
• 18 tbs butter
• 1/2 cup milk
• 4 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 2 3/4 cups sugar
• 1 1/3 cups dark chocolate chips
• 2 tbs oil

Directions- preheat oven to 300. Boil water in a pan. Add butter and dark chocolate and whisk until melted. Cool 5 minutes. Mix in one egg at a time and vanilla. Stir in sugar. Add milk and oil. Fold in dry ingredients. Place parchment paper in 2 – 8″ cake pans and spray with Pam. Evenly divide batter in pans. Bake 30 to 40 minutes. (Toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out with a few crumbs). Cool completely.

Filling ingredients

• 2 tbs butter, softened
• 1/2 cup marshmallow fluff
• 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• Milk

Directions – combine butter and fluff. Blend in powdered sugar. Add vanilla. Add enough milk (1 tbs at a time) to make filling easy to spread.

Place one cake, top side down on serving plate. Spread with filling. Place other,cake, flat side down, on top of filling

Frosting ingredients

• 1 stick of butter, melted
• 2/3 cup baking cocoa
• 3 cups powdered sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla
• Milk

Directions – combine ingredients and add enough milk, one tbs at a time, so you can easily frost cake.

Squiggle ingredients

• 4 tbs butter
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1 tbs Milk
• 1 tsp vanilla

Directions – blend ingredients together and scoop into sandwich baggie., cut out one corner of baggie and squiggle away on top of cake.

Store in covered container.