The Lush Chef

It was Malbec's birthday over the weekend and she was making her famous baked ziti for a chill dinner celebration.  Of course I had to bake her a cake, and wanted something to go well with Italian food and the numerous bottles of red wine that we'd be popping open.  My Aunt Donna makes this amazing Punch Bowl Chocolate Cake with Amaretto (an Italian almond-flavored liquer).  I hadn't eaten it in so long and I knew I could make it in a jiffy.  Check it out lushes, I'm making a dessert with a box cake recipe, box pudding and Cool Whip.  I'm taking some big short cuts here and I like it.  This doesn't happen often, but I need to stay true to Aunt Donna's recipe, and let's face it, we all need a time-saver once in a while.

Punch Bowl Chocolate Cake with Amaretto - serves 10-15
Ingredients:

• 1 box of Duncan Hines Devil's Food Cake Mix
• 3 eggs
• 1 1/3 cups water
• 1/2 cup vegetable/canola oil
• 2 3oz boxes of instant chocolate pudding mix
• 3 cups whole milk
• 1/4 cup Amaretto (I use Disaronno)
• 6 Heath chocolate bars, crushed
• 16 oz Cool Whip 

- Bake cake according to the directions on the box and put batter in a 9x13" pan.
- While the cake is cooling, beat the milk, amaretto and chocolate pudding mix together.
- Crumble the cake into medium-sized pieces after it has cooled.
- In a punch bowl (I don't have one, so I used a leftover glass container from an old flower arrangement), layer in 1/3 of the crumbled cake, 1/3 of the pudding mixture, 1/3 of the crushed Heath bars and 1/3 of the cool whip.
- Repeat that 2 more times (my container was small, so I just did it twice and saved the leftovers).
- I used some of the remaining Heath bar crumbles to sprinkle on top.