Death By Chocolate

This is a perennial favorite of everybody’s no matter where I take it. I stole the recipe from my Great Aunt Dimple at a family reunion a million years ago and have made it so many times since then that if somebody punched me awake from a dead sleep and said, “DEATH BY CHOCOLATE!”, I could probably recite the ingredients and instructions without too much hesitation. The recipe in its entirety is at the bottom for printing.

Your Ingredients:

A large box of Jell-o can be substituted for the 2 small boxes but they didn’t have a large box at the sto’ so there ya go. You can also make this slightly less heart-attack inducing by substituting fat free/sugar free Jello-o, Cool Whip and candy bars. You can use any chocolate bars your heart desires and any dark chocolate cake you want.

Mix the cake per the instructions on the cake box. You do not have to use a genuine antique McCoy mixing bowl but it would taste better if you did.

Bake in a 13 x 9 casserole dish or a rectangular metal pan, again, according to the directions on your cake box.

If you’re A.D.H.D. like me, set your timer for 35 minutes. Pop that in the oven and while its baking, mix up your Jell-o according to the instructions on the box. Again, you don’t have to use vintage 1970’s Tupperware but it would taste better if you did.

Put a lid on it and pop that in the refrigerator to set.

Now comes the therapy. Get a gallon Zip-lock bag, freezer bag is best, unwrap all of those candy bars, put them in the Zip-lock and seal with all of the air squeezed out. Grab your trusty hammer.

Imagine the person’s face you hate the most, be it a government official, your ex-boss that fired you, a step-parent or your mother-in-law. Imagine that person’s face on your Zip-lock and beat the tar out of it. If you do it correctly, everything on your counter should be bouncing around, clanging together and your significant other/children should be asking you what in Gawd’s Name is going on in the kitchen. It should turn out looking like this and you should have a smile on your face. I have gotten carried away to the point of losing most of my candy through holes beaten into the bag… stop yourself before you go that far.

If you live anywhere south of Memphis, put that beaten chocolate in the fridge while you’re patiently waiting for the cake to bake.

When the cake is done or the timer goes off, cut cake into manageable pieces and LET COOL THOROUGHLY. You may have to take some of the cake out to let it cool but if you go to slapping all of the other ingredients in there without letting it cool completely, you’re have a melted mess instead of pretty layers. Don’t ask me how I know that. I just know.

 

Get the largest bowl you own. At our house, we use the punch bowl. Seriously. Put a layer of COOLED cake in the bottom. It doesn’t have to be perfect and it doesn’t have to be bumper to bumper. There can be spaces. (Also, this cake stuck on the bottom. This is the one recipe where that doesn’t matter at all. I scraped up all of the crumbs and dumped them on the last layer of cake pieces. Nobody’s gonna see cause its covered with pudding and Cool-Whip so who cares?)

Put a layer of chocolate pudding over that, then a layer of Cool-Whip. The Cool-Whip needs to be defrosted. Mine wasn’t defrosted all the way so I stuck it in the oven.

Top the Cool-Whip with beaten chocolate bars.

Keep layering cake, pudding, Cool-Whip, candy until you’re at the top of the bowl. Cool-Whip and candy should be the top most layer because it’s prettier that way.

Fight off the other people in your house, put some Press-n-Seal over the top or some Saran Wrap and refrigerate. Feeds one herd.

Aunt Dimple’s Death By Chocolate

1 dark chocolate cake mix (and all the ingredients needed to mix it)

1 large Cool-Whip

1 large Jell-o Chocolate Pudding (and all the ingredients needed to mix it)

Nestlé Crunch Bars

Instructions:

Bake cake according to instructions on box in a 13 x 9 casserole dish or rectangular baking pan. While baking and cooling cake, mix pudding according to directions on box. Refrigerate. Unwrap chocolate bars, put in zip-lock and beat with hammer or put in food processor. Set aside.

In a punch bowl, put one layer of cooled cake on the bottom, a layer of chocolate pudding, a layer of defrosted Cool-Whip then a layer of chocolate crumbles. Keep layering until you reach the top of the punch bowl with the uppermost layer being Cool-Whip and chocolate crumbles. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate.