Chocolate Crunch Cake with Macadamia Nuts

Quarantine baking is about making baked goods that do not take any "rare" ingredients, like yeast. For some reason, there has not been a steady supply of yeast in months. Everyone is comfort baking bread, I guess. This is the ultimate pantry/fridge/freezer staple recipe. What we like is that the "crunch" layer in the middle camelizes and the nuts are left bigger so it gives a good crunch.

Ingredients:

Cake mix:

• 1 box of chocolate cake
• 1 8oz. container sour cream
• 2/3 c. butter, melted
• 4 eggs
• 1/2 c. water

Sugar mix:

• 1 c packed brown sugar
• 1/3 c baking mac nuts, large chopped
• 1/3 c chocolate chips
• 2 tsp. cinnamon

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350º and grease a 13"x9" pan. If you are using a dark, non-stick pan, adjust the oven down to 325º.
2. Mix the cake mix ingredients in a large bowl and set aside.
3. In a smaller bowl, mix the sugar mix.
4. Pour half of the cake batter in pan. Try to even it out. With the sour cream my batter gets a little spongey.
5. Sprinkle the sugar mixture on the cake batter, then cover the sugar with the rest of the cake. Again, try to even it out as much as possible.
6. Bake in the oven for 40 minutes then check for doneness with a toothpick. It could take as long as 45-48 minutes.
7. Let it cool for 10 minutes, then frost with your favorite frosting while it is still a little warm. 

Any store-bought, on sale frosting will do. For this picture, I had coconut pecan frosting which had a nice texture, but we normally just use chocolate because Big Spazz buys it on sale to make cupcakes.