GITK - Almost Better than Sex Cake

I have been putting off baking this cake because I haven't made it in at least 10 years and I was actually a bit intimidated. I first tried this cake when I was a freshman at Drew University and worked at this really cool coffee-house/cabaret on campus called "The Other End" (and it's still there!) One of the managers at the time (Miranda? Marissa?) made a cake by this name. It was delicious and, truly, almost better than sex (almost). I never got her recipe and when I left Drew at the end of my freshman year, I assumed I'd never have it again.

But, during the holidays of 1992, a client of the company I worked for brought over a cake that tasted just like the one I had at Drew. I was amazed and thrilled. And she was kind enough to give me the recipe. (Remember, this was WAY before the Internet. Google "almost better than sex cake" and you would be amazed how many recipes come up. Interestingly enough, most of them are different from my recipe. I did, however, find at least one hit with a similar recipe). Here's mine:

Almost Better than Sex Cake

1 box Yellow Cake mix
1 3oz box of Instant Vanilla Pudding
½ C. Oil
½ C. Water
3 Eggs, beaten
8 oz. Sour cream
4 oz. German Chocolate, grated
1 C. chopped pecans
6 oz. Butterscotch chips

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2) Grease and flour a tube pan (grease and flour well!)
3) Mix together cake mix and pudding mix.
4) add oil, water and eggs. Beat on high speed for 2 minutes (or by hand until pale yellow and smooth - about 10 minutes of continuous stirring. Find a good show on TV)
5) Add sour cream. Stir until just mixed.
6) Add remaining ingredients, one at a time, stirring just until each is mixed in.
7) spread batter into prepared pan
8) bake for 55-65 minutes
9) cool for 15 minutes then remove from pan
10) cool completely.

This cake doesn't need any frosting - it's rich enough and moist enough on its own. Here are some tips - I highly recommend a rotary grater. I never realized how much chocolate I lost due to melting and breakage when I grated it by hand. I was amazed how much grated chocolate I ended up with! (I also ended up grating the pecans. The ones I bought were still in pretty big pieces and I don't have a chopper. I thought I'd be able to chop the nuts using the bigger of the grater barrels. I was wrong. It'll be interesting to see how it tastes tomorrow.)

Another tip - Really make sure to grease and flour the pan. I used butter this time and made sure I covered the pan thickly and that there was flour on every possible part. For the first time ever, the cake came out in one entire piece. None of it stayed on the bottom of the pan.

I will admit that I used Fat-Free sour cream this time. I hadn't planned on it but when I was at the store, only the fat free was available in an 8oz. container. I didn't need any extra sour cream floating around my 'fridge, that's for sure!

In addition to the fat-free sour cream, if you wanted to go lite on this recipe, you can use Egg Beaters instead of whole eggs and applesauce instead of the oil. But, honestly, with everything else, what's the point?