Making Box Cake Taste Gourmet

I get to make my brother Eric's B-day cake today, I'm way excited. He wants a chocolate cake with orange frosting. I have a chocolate cake mix, and cream cheese frosting on hand, and I also have pure orange extract, so I can easily fulfill this request without too much effort . . . But of course, being who I am, I would rather make it as delicious as possible, and so I will of course be putting a bit more effort in, and while reading recipes for inspiration, I stumbled across this great little article about how to make a box cake taste like it was made from scratch, by adding some extra ingredients to the mix.

They suggest any or all of the following:

1 cup sour cream

1 box instant pudding

1/2 cup chocolate chips

Handful of chocolate kisses

I, for one, think that the sour cream will add a lot to a chocolate orange cake, so I'll definitely will be doing that this time around. I'm way excited! While I would normally have thought of the other ideas I would never have thought of sour cream on my own and I am lucky enough to have just barley purchased some.

The mix says it has pudding in it, so I probably won't worry about adding any of that, though I might add a touch more chocolate either with bakers cocoa or in the form of chocolate chips.

Anyway, I'd better get to baking. If it looks as good as I'm thinking it will taste I might be posting some pictures up here soon.

Happy Baking!

~Julie :}

Update:
Here is a photo of the cake (post candles). Not the loveliest thing, but it did taste really moist from the sour cream. I didn't add any extra chocolate, I think maybe I should have, or perhaps some more orange extract. But yes, it was still good. I sprinkled it with mini chocolate chips after I frosted it with the orange cream cheese frosting.

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