Jill Can Cook: Chess Squares

I used to be one of those people that made pretty much every cookie/cake/brownie/dessert from box mixes. Those box mixes are so handy in a pinch and are great in that you really can't screw them up. I can't even say anything bad about them. My only problem with them now is that I have a few various dessert mixes hanging out in my pantry and I really want to start making desserts from scratch (or as close to scratch as I can). This begs the question: What to do with all those mixes?

 

I can't very well make 5 boxes of cake all at once. I don't even want to eat 5 cakes. Why did I even buy 5 cake boxes? I don't even eat 5 cakes a year! But, somehow, I have like 5 boxes of cake mix. I needed to find a recipe that would use up a cake mix but not bore me to death. I kept seeing this recipe for CHESS SQUARES all over Pinterest. It called for a box of cake mix for the ingredients. So, I thought I'd give it a shot.

 

Chess Squares

Ingredients:

 

I love it when there aren't a million ingredients.

 

• 1 box yellow cake mix
• 3 eggs
• 8 oz cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted
• 4 cups (1 lb) powdered sugar

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 300 and spray a 9×13 dish with cooking spray.
2. Mix cake mix, melted butter and one egg to a soft dough. Press into the bottom of the pan.
3. Mix powdered sugar, softened cream cheese and remaining two eggs until smooth, about 1-2 mins. Pour on top of crust.
4. Bake at 300 for 40-50 minutes until top is golden brown.

 

I was pretty excited to try out this recipe. There weren't too many ingredients and I could use up an entire box of cake mix! Unfortunately, I wasn't so excited to take pictures, I guess, because I barely took any.

This is the bottom layer of the cake.

Whipping up the filling. It's coming together quite nicely.

The two layers right before I put it in the oven.

The finished product.

I was very excited to take this out of the oven and hack into it! My house smelled so good and sweet. When I first took this out of the oven, the top was a lot higher, but after it cooled, it fell about 2 inches!! I was worried that I did something, but thinking back to the pictures I saw on other blogs, I think it was supposed to do that.

I let it cool as long as I could and when I couldn't wait any longer, I cut out a little piece to have a taste. And I must say, this is probably the sweetest dessert I've ever had! It was almost like eating hot, buttery sugar.

So, I let my piece cool to room temp, hoping, maybe a temperature change might calm down the sugar. And.. No, that did not work. In fact, eating it at room temperature made it even more sugary!

It does look quite delicious though!

Joe got home from work and saw the pan in the fridge. He immediately got a piece out for himself. When asked if it was too sweet, he said it was perfect; not too sweet at all. He said he never had anything like that before and really liked it.

I think he just says things like to this me to make me feel like an alien. So, it's a split. I could barely eat one piece due to all the sugar while Joe ate the rest of it over the course of the week.

I'm giving this recipe a C. It gets high marks for being easy and not needing a lot of ingredients. I'm giving it low marks for giving me like 50 cavities. The only saving grace is that Joe liked it. So, please, if you love me, make this recipe, have a few bites, and then tell me if I have alien taste buds that are hypersensitive to sugar!! Thank you!!