“Hey, Em,” Dan said. “I noticed the cake stand has been empty for a while.”

I laughed. “Dude, it was just washed last night. It’s only been sitting empty on the dining room table for, what? Twelve hours? Not even twelve hours!”

But, point taken.

“I’ll tell you what,” I said, “you go to Meijer and get the stuff I need, and I’ll make you a cake. You pick the flavor.”

Twenty minutes later, Dan had returned with three cake mixes and nine boxes of Jell-O pudding. “The grocery gods heard my cries for cake and decided to hold a 10 for $10 sale on cake mix and instant pudding!” He held a plastic bag aloft.

The recipe below is adapted from Dangerously Delicious’s Pistachio Pudding Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting.

Ingredients

CAKE MIX
1 box yellow cake mix
3 boxes pistachio pudding dry mix
1/2 C vegetable oil
1/2 C milk
1 C sour cream
4 eggs

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Combine all cake ingredients in stand mixer and pour into greased bundt pan. Bake for 1 hour.
3. Place cake on serving plate and cool.
4. Skip the frosting.

Emily’s Notes

Change the flavors! The pistachio cake is delicious, but last week we swapped chocolate cake and pudding mix, and it was heavenly.

This batter is thick and heavy. The original recipe says to use a hand mixer, but the motor in mine just couldn’t hang and I’m still to weak to mix this effectively by hand. I let the Kitchen Aid do the heavy lifting for this recipe.

This cake is really dense and really delicious and just the right amount of sweet for me. After trying it with and without frosting, I prefer it without.

Yes, I wrote about this cake once before, and I am writing about it again. It’s that good.