The first thing I want to say about this cake is that it is INSANE. It is just completely Batman CRAZY.

Let’s start with the name: Better-Than-Sex Cake.

Right there — don’t you want to be friends with the woman who invented this cake? You know she’s fun at a party, right? (And you know that it had to be a woman who first made this. No man would ever give a cake that name. They just wouldn’t.)

Next, there’s the cake itself. You start with a chocolate cake which is bound to be pretty good. But that’s not good enough. No — you have to make it sweeter and gooier. And then after making it pretty dang sweet and gooey, you have to make it even more sweet and more gooey. And then — what the heck — let’s throw some whipped cream on top, just for kicks!

The upshot here is that you use a cake as a sponge to absorb caramel.

Completely ridiculous.

We didn’t have this cake for years and years when I was growing up. I think it only made an appearance for a few years when I was in my pre-teens (we didn’t call it “tweens” back then) but it really made an impact in my memories — for fairly obvious reasons, I suppose. My mom told me she got the recipe from a woman at work (she was an elementary school teacher at the time) and the other lady got it from her church cookbook. Hee!

Now, let’s get to it:

You’re going to need a box of German chocolate cake mix, eggs and oil to make the cake, a can of sweetened condensed milk, a jar of Mrs. Richardson’s butterscotch caramel sauce and a tub of Cool Whip. This is a Weight Watchers recipe. (Kidding!)

Make your cake according to the package directions.

Stir it up real good.

Bake it in a 9 x 13 pan.

As soon as it comes out — while it’s still warm — poke it all over with the handle of a wooden spoon or some other pokey thing.

Next pour an entire can of sweetened condensed milk over the top of the cake, letting it drip down into the holes you poked. This will make the cake gooey to the core.

Then the recipe says to pour 3/4 of the jar of caramel sauce over it. Seriously? Is the thinking here that the whole jar would make it too sweet? You could dump a half a bag of sugar on this thing at this point and it wouldn’t taste any sweeter. What harm is 3 oz. of caramel going to do? I went ahead and put it all on.

Gently spread the condensed milk and the caramel sauce around the top of the cake with your spoon, pushing the goo down into all those holes you poked.

Tuck it in around the edges so those get gooey too.

Then dump the thawed container of Cool Whip on and spread that around. The Cool Whip is important because it balances the flavor of the cake out.

Slice and enjoy!

The Verdict:

• Zach didn’t care for it at all, which is pretty much what I expected. He’s not big on desserts in general so I wasn’t too surprised.
• I also gave some to my neighbor and her niece and told them to be brutally honest. They said that they liked it, but who knows if that was true or if they were just being polite. They did love the name of the cake though and we all had a good laugh about it.
• After Wyatt ate his piece he told me he thought it was good but, “It wasn’t that sweet, Mom.” ?!?!?! “The only part that was sweet was the orange stuff,” he said. Oh yeah — you must mean the caramel that’s infused every crumb of the cake. Yeah, aside from that it’s pretty mellow.
• I thought it was pretty darn tasty but man was it sweeeeeeeeet! I thought my teeth were going to jump out of my mouth in protest and run to the nearest dental office seeking amnesty. This is a cake a twelve year old is going to like much more than someone in her late 30’s will, that’s for sure. The flavor of the cake settled a bit after a night in the fridge and it didn’t seem quite as overwhelming, so that was good.

My final say is this: This cake is pretty good, but it’s not something I’ll be making regularly. It’s kind of fun for the kitsch value and it’s fun to tell people the name, but honestly after all my years living in a health-conscious area and attempting to eat a healthy diet it’s not going to be very appealing to my friends and familiy and I feel too guilty eating it myself. So this one might be better off staying in my memory.

And to answer your final question: No, it’s not.

Better Than Sex Cake

1 box German Chocolate cake mix (and the ingredients to prepare it — probably eggs and oil)

1 can sweetened condensed milk

1 jar of Mrs. Richard’s butterscotch caramel ice cream topping

8 oz. tub Cool Whip

Bake the German chocolate cake in a 9×13 inch pan according to the package directions. As soon as it is out of the oven, poke holes in the top with the end of a wooden spoon. Pour one can of sweetened condensed milk over the top. The pour ¾ (or one) jar of Mrs. Richard’s butterscotch ice cream topping over the top. Cool. Spread cake with 8 oz. cool whip. Refrigerate.

If you grew up in the late 70’s or early 80’s chances are pretty good that you had a baseball shirt at some point in time. And if you had a baseball shirt, you most likely ironed something onto it. Maybe you had a picture of a kid with braces that said “The tin grin is in!” or maybe you had your name or perhaps you were one of the lucky kids who had both — one on the front and one on the back? My baseball shirt was white with pink sleeves and my mom and dad carefully ironed a unicorn picture to the front and my name on the back in sparkly Cooper Black font. I can assure you I was hot stuff in that shirt!

I bought Wyatt a baseball shirt a couple of weeks ago and since then it has been calling out for some fuzzy iron-on letters.

This should be a quick and easy project. Shall we begin?

Start off by ironing the shirt. By looking at these photos after the fact, you’ll note that there is some kind of stain down the front of it. Please ignore that going forward.

Pull the letters off the sheet. I used flocked letters because they’re fluffy and wonderful. Not quite as wonderful as sparkly letters, but these run a close second.

Scatter the letters all over the shirt willy nilly.

Ha ha! Just kidding. Did you know I use rulers in practically every craft project I do? I do! I’m a Virgo.

Start off by centering the ruler on the shirt. Then pick the middle letter in the name you’re adding  and put that on the mid-point of the ruler.

Add the rest of the letters on either side, spacing them out as evenly as you can.

Put the ruler over the bottom of the letters about a quarter inch to hold them in place and then press with the iron for a few seconds.When you lift up the iron, you may notice the T’s are stuck to the iron. If that happens, it means that you put the T’s on upside down like I did.

When you pull them off the iron, they’ll be all melty and stuck to themselves like this. You won’t be able to pull them apart to fix them either. Check the package to see if there are any more T’s. Since there won’t be any others, it would be OK to say something like, “Oh, crap-a-doodle-doo!” at this point.

Take a look at the shirt and see if you can get by with just the letters that stuck to the shirt. Consider creating a new nickname for your son, such as “Wya”.

Your next step in this quick and simple craft project will be to drive back to the craft store for another package of iron-on letters.

When you get back home put your new T’s on the shirt. Check, double-check and triple-check to be sure that you haven’t put them on upside down again.

Press the letters with an iron.

When you lift the iron, notice that there is some kind of sticky brown goo all over the letters you just drove all the way to the frakkin’ craft store to get. Say a naughty word and look at the iron to see what the heck is all over the lang dang heat element. You should notice some brown goo in the exact same shape as the T’s you ironed the wrong side of earlier. Curse your own carelessness and shake your fist at the stupid shirt with the stupid brown letters on it.

Try wiping the goo off with a wet washcloth. When that doesn’t work, get out a butter knife and scrape the brown goo off. This will work! Wipe the brown stuff off the iron and re-press to make sure the letters are properly adhered.

Enjoy your fancy new shirt and the Bad News Bear who will wear it.

(Incidentally, Wyatt loves his new shirt, despite the poses he struck in these photos. When your name is Wyatt you don’t get to pull personalized license plates or mugs off the rack in the gift shop at Disneyland, so having something with his name on it finally is pretty cool.)

A couple of weeks ago, I tie-dyed t-shirts with my son as an afternoon time-killer. We had a lot of fun doing it because it was easy (no seriously — it really was) and the shirts came out great! These were not the mediocre, faded Rit dye type of shirts I made in high school and college. These came out with bright,  saturated colors and there weren’t any huge swaths of un-dyed fabric. I thought I’d share what I learned about tie-dying with you all.

Step 1: Gather your supplies

First off, you’ll need to gather your supplies. You can buy individual dyes, rubber bands, and gloves or you can buy a kit and have all that work done for you. I’m lazy, so I opted for the kit. I got this one at JoAnn’s with a 40% off coupon, so it was about $6. You can also buy them online at Amazon in lots of color combinations.  I’m going to show you how to use this kit in this tutorial, so if you opt for a different set of materials, follow the instructions for those dyes.

This kit said that it dyed “up to 8 shirts” but I only had enough dye for six shirts –  one adult sized and 5 kid sized. I had to really stretch to get that 6th shirt dyed too, so I probably shouldn’t really count it in the total.

In addition to the supplies in the kit (pictured above), you will also need garbage bags to cover your work surface and ziplock bags to store your shirts in while the dye sets up. You will also need something to dye, of course.

Step 2: Fold your shirt

I’m going to start off showing you how to do a spiral pattern because that’s the most dramatic and fun pattern to make.

First, lay your shirt out flat. Your shirt should be washed to remove any sizing if it’s brand new. It should also be a little damp when you fold it and add the dyes.

Next, pinch the shirt somewhere in the middle and start twisting the fabric around. Keep twisting until the whole shirt has been twisted into a disk. As you go, make little adjustments here and there so you have lots of folds and pleats in the fabric. This exposes more fabric to the dyes and will make for a more interesting pattern.

You should end up with a flat, twisty disc, like the one above. It should look kind of  like a hurricane.

Next, carefully wrap rubber bands around the shirt. Put the rubber bands on so they intersect over the center of the disc (or the “eye of the hurricane”). You should use at least three bands, which will divide the disc up into 6 segments. I used six bands on this one because this was an adult sized shirt and it felt a little floppy with only three.

If you’re doing other shirts, you should fold and tie those up now too.

Step 3: Dye your shirt

Prepare you work surface by putting garbage bags down. You can do this inside, but it’s messy enough that if you’re doing this with kids, you should just plan on doing it outside. Don’t work right on the ground though because your shirt will get dirty and mess up all your hard work.

Once your workspace is ready, put on your gloves and prep your dyes. The dyes in my kit were already in squirt bottles and all I had to do was add water and shake them. I found that it worked best to fill them about half way, shake until the dye powder was dissolved and then add the rest of the water and shake a bit more.

Next, start squirting the dyes on the shirt. This is the fun part! To make the the spiral pattern, you need to squirt the wedges between the rubber bands.You can see what I mean by looking at the pictures. Squirt both sides of the disc and open the folds of the shirt here and there to make sure the dye is getting to the fabric in the middle of the shirt too. If there’s no dye in the middle, squirt a little in.

It’s OK if the dye crosses the lines a little and mixes — that will make your shirt more interesting. Keep in mind that if you mix some colors together — say orange and green — they will result in a muddy brown color. You’ll have better luck mixing analogous colors (ones that are next to each other in the rainbow). Since I used primary colors for the dyes I didn’t have to worry about that.

Step 4: Let the dye sit

Once your shirts are all dyed, put them in plastic bags to let the dyes set. You want them to remain damp, so sealing them in ziplock bags works well.  The kit I had said to leave them 6-8 hours, but I left them overnight and found that that made the colors much brighter.

Step 5: Rinse your shirt and untie it

After the dyes have set up over night (or for 6-8 hours), rinse the shirt until the water runs clear.

Then, it’s time for the big reveal! Pull the rubber bands off your shirt and shake it out to see your design.

Ooooooooh! Pretty!

Now, wash it in the washing machine. I highly recommend that you avoid putting your classic white button down shirt in with it.  You might even go so far as to only wash your tie-dye shirt with other tie-dye shirts on this first round. After that, use your best judgment and enjoy looking like a hippie!

Wanna try some other tie-dye patterns? Here are directions for a few more:

Bull’s Eye

Chevron

Stripes

Little Circles

Crumpled

Here’s how you fold a t-shirt to make a chevron tie-dye pattern.

For basic dying instructions check out my Tie Dye Tutorial.

Begin, by folding your t-shirt in half vertically.

Fold over the top half of the shirt at a 45 degree angle.

Fold the shirt back along the angle you created.

Continue folding the shirt into pleats until it is in a long narrow strip.

Tie the shirt off into sections with rubber bands.

Squirt dye on each banded off section of the shirt with the squirt bottles. Open the folds here and there to make sure the dye is going all the way to the middle and that there aren’t any big white spaces.

Continue on with the dying process as outlined in my basic Tie Dye Tutorial.

Wanna try some other tie-dye patterns? Here are directions for a few more:

Spiral

Bull’s Eye

Stripes

Little Circles

Crumpled

Here’s how you fold a t-shirt to make a striped tie-dye pattern.

For basic dying instructions check out my Tie Dye Tutorial.

Lay your t-shirt out flat. Starting at the bottom of the shirt, fold the shirt into pleats.

Continue pleating the shirt until it is all folded.

Section the shirt off with rubber bands.

Squirt dye on each banded off section of the shirt with the squirt bottles. Open the folds here and there to make sure the dye is going all the way to the middle and that there aren’t any big white spaces.

Continue on with the dying process as outlined in my basic Tie Dye Tutorial.

Wanna try some other tie-dye patterns? Here are directions for a few more:

Spiral

Bull’s Eye

Chevron

Little Circles

Crumpled

Here’s how you fold a t-shirt to make a crumpled tie-dye pattern.

For basic dying instructions check out my Tie Dye Tutorial.

Lay the shirt flat on your work surface and gather it up into random wrinkles by spreading your fingers out and crumpling it up in a disc shape. You want to expose as much of the t-shirt to the dye as you can so make sure there are lots of little folds and wrinkles.

When you have finished crumpling, wrap 3 or 4 rubber bands around the shirt. Apply dye randomly to the shirt using the squirt bottles. I used a combination of blue and pink for this shirt, but you could use several other colors as well.

Continue on with the dying process as outlined in my basic Tie Dye Tutorial.

Wanna try some other tie-dye patterns? Here are directions for a few more:

Spiral

Bull’s Eye

Chevron

Stripes

Little Circles