Any Flavor Cake With Chocolate Fudge Frosting

I love baking. Love it. The first food I ever made by myself was a batch of chocolate chip cookies (and that recipe is still my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe to this day!) but right now, I'm going to tell you about my favorite cake.
What's great about this is that it can be any flavor. Chocolate? Check. Butter recipe yellow cake (my favorite!) check. Funfetti? Yeah, you can do that too. It starts with a base of any box cake mix of your choice, and then you add some ingredients to make it super moist and extra yummy. Basically, I'm the cake boss of my family (giving Buddy a run for his money).
I like to top it with homemade chocolate fudge frosting, but really any frosting will do.

Any Flavor Cake With Chocolate Fudge Frosting
adapted from Bride&Groom First and Forever Cookbook 
ingredients
for the cake:
1 box of cake mix (I used Butter Recipe Yellow... for this one only, add the same amount of butter as it says on the instructions on the back of the box)
1 cup of water
3 eggs
1/3 cup of oil (vegetable, corn, whatever you have... but I wouldn't recommend olive oil)
1/3 cup of sour cream
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon of salt

for the frosting:
12 oz or 2 cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips
2 cups sugar
2/3 cups milk
1 cup unsalted butter, cut into chunks
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

directions
Put the rack at the bottom of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees F. Grease 3 nonstick 8-inch cake pans with 1.5 inch sides.

Combine all cake ingredients with an electric hand mixer until well blended. Pour into the pans and bake for about 25 minutes, or until you can stick a knife in the cake and it comes out clean. Let cool on wire racks completely.

While the cakes are cooling, put chocolate chips into a mixing bowl. Set aside. Combine all other ingredients except the vanilla extract in a medium pan over high heat and bring to a boil, letting it boil for 1 minute. Pour over the chocolate chips, and add the vanilla. Combine with and electric hand mixer for about 15 minutes (it'll give your arms a workout!).

Assemble the cake by cutting the very top off 2 of the 3 layers (in order to make the top level and flat). Spread about 3/4 cup of frosting in between each layer, and then the rest on the top and sides of the cake. Decorate as you please, and enjoy.