“Mom won a cooking contest?!” read the text from my daughter to my husband.

Yes, I can hardly believe it myself, but I won first place in the Nash Community College Best Chocolate Dessert Contest. This event is part of our annual Christmas lunch at school.

Notice there is both a question mark as well as an exclamation mark behind my daughter's text. That punctuation is there for a reason. You see, I have never been known for my culinary skills. I have about six basic meals that I rotate. Some involve crock pot cooking, where I just dump some kind of meat and a can of soup in the big old pot and hope for the best six hours later.

So for me to win a cooking contest was a little bit of a joke in my family. Heck, as I said, I could hardly believe it my own self.

“Exactly what did you bake?” my daughter asked later in the day when she phoned. 

“A chocolate-chocolate chip cake, page 266 in the Junior Guild Cookbook. The Down East One,” I replied.

My daughter didn't seem to recall the one time I had made this cake before, maybe around 2003?

Anyway, I know you readers are dying to have this recipe, so in case you don't have a copy of the Junior Guild Cookbook mentioned above, here it is.

Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Cake

1 box of yellow cake mix (OK, I now admit that this cake is not entirely from scratch)

1 large box of chocolate instant pudding

1 cup of vegetable oil

4 eggs

6 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate chips

8 ounces of sour cream

½ cup of chopped pecans

Mix all ingredients together. (I stirred it up by hand since my electric mixer is broken and I can't remember to buy a new one.) Spoon into a 10-inch Bundt pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 50-55 minutes. 

Hint from me: do not be disturbed if the cake seems gooey when you first take it out; that's  kinda the texture you're shooting for.

Sounds pretty chocolaty, right? Believe me, it is. But is it an award-winning dessert?

Well, it happened to be on one particular December day when there were only two other entries and both of these looked to be the same dessert, that chocolate éclair cake thing. I love that dessert, but my theory is that the two sorta canceled each other.

Also, not to be bragging (me, brag?) but I had read the directions carefully and knew that part of the judging criteria was appearance. (Isn't that so true of life in general, but I digress....) So, I took my chocolate-chocolate chip cake and DECORATED it. I let my imagination go wild!

First, I used a little chocolate frosting which helped to cover the cracks that were developing after I flipped the cake out of the bundt pan. And then I sprinkled crushed candy canes over the frosting .  Further damage control—and very festive. Finally, I unwrapped several more candy canes, and stood them up inside the hole of the bundt cake. Hey, flashy catches the judge's eye.

So, contrary to the advice I gave everyone in the last edition of Charm (the part about buying Keebler cookies rather than making homemade), I actually got in the kitchen and baked a Christmas dessert.  On a whim, I decided to try something I'd never done before, enter a cooking contest. It was fun! And rewarding. I won a $20 Harris Teeter gift card.

Happy New Year to me...oh, and to all of you too.

Patsy and what's left of her award winning Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Cake!