Rich Turtle Cake Pie

My husband is tearing apart our bathroom this week.

So, being the control/neat freak that I am, left. For the whole week. Messes are just too stressful.

I'm just not thinking about how disastrous my house is right now. It's a small little house, so one room being renovated turns into my whole house being turned upside down.

Plus, when a door is getting cut in your wall, a ceiling being ripped down, tile being smashed off walls, a new sink being put in, shelves coming out, and a new floor getting put in, it's pretty much impossible to keep things neat and clean, even if you are the neatest cleanest person that ever walked the earth. And I'm pretty sure me and my husband are.

So, I'm doing what I did when I gave birth to my daughter.

Just not thinking about the process.

I'd rather pretend it's just a magical thing.

So I was super stressed out all day, and needed chocolate in the worst way as you can imagine.

I made this insanely moist, rich, divine cake, poked a bunch of holes in it, and dumped a whole lot of freshly made caramel sauce.

But there's more.

I then melted chocolate with butter, a little milk, and mixed in powdered sugar. It was like WOAH.

And THEN, there was more caramel drizzled on top, and pecans topped it all off.

Basically, the most massive turtle you ever had in your life. I love turtles. A good friend of mine makes the best turtle candies in the universe for me every year for my birthday and I love her for it.

It's one of those things though, where I will probably never ever make them, because they won't be as good as hers, then I'll be depressed and want to just give up on baking ever again.

So make this cake if your husband is ripping apart your bathroom, or if you just need turtle cake.

Oh, and It's called 'cake pie' cause I made it in a pie plate...but you don't have to, you can just use a normal round cake pan, or double the recipe and use a 9x13".

Rich Turtle Cake Pie

• For the cake:
• 1 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup flour
• 1/3 cup cocoa
• 3/4 tsp. baking powder
• 3/4 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/4 cup vegetable
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 1/2 boiling water (or coffee)

Heat oven to 350, grease and flour a pie plate, or cake pan.

Stir together all dry ingredients.

Add egg, milk, oil and vanilla.

Stir in boiling water.

Bake for 25-35 minutes until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. A few crumbs is okay!

While cake is baking, make your caramel sauce.

For the caramel:

• 2 Tbsp. Butter
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup cream (heavy or half and half)
• pinch of salt
• 1 tsp. vanilla

Mix butter, brown sugar, cream and salt in a saucepan over medium heat.

Cook while whisking gently for 4-6 minutes until thickened.

Add vanilla and stir for another minute to thicken a bit more.

When cake is done,immediately poke holes all over the cake with a fork, and pour all but about 1/4 cup of the caramel sauce all over.

While your cake is cooling, make frosting. You can use any chocolate frosting you want...But here's the one I used:

For the frosting:

• 1 1/2 cups chocolate chips
• 2 tbsp. butter
• 2-4 tbsp. milk
• 1/2-1 cup powdered sugar

In a saucepan over low-medium heat, melt chocolate chips with butter til mostly melted.

Add in milk continuing to stir over low until smooth.

Mix in confectioners sugar til you have the desired consistency.

Pour frosting into a ziploc bag, snip off the corner and in a swirl pattern dispense frosting on the cake.This just makes it easier to spread cause the caramel makes it messy and a little difficult.

Drizzle the rest of the caramel all over.

Use whole pecans to decorate the top so it looks all beautiful!

Enjoy!