Cake Mix Improv

I *am* the cake mix doctor! In my effort to clean out the pantry, I ran across a box of German chocolate cake mix. Who eats this stuff? And, of course, I thought it seemed like a good idea at the time to buy the pre-made pecan coconut frosting.

A quick pantry search found the required three eggs, vegetable oil needed to whip up this particular cake. And since I'm not a big eater of sweets, my goal was to figure out how to give this stuff away -- as well as make it edible. With a couple of recipients in mind, I made another pantry sweep and found a cupcake pan, cupcake cups, chocolate chips, pecans, and coconut. I added the chocolate chips to the cake batter, and toasted pecans, chopped them and added coconut to the store bought frosting. (The toasted pecans mellowed the artificial butter smell.) Garnished with whole pecan halves and toasted coconut, the final products were pretty edible. I gave them all away.