The Copycat Yodels That Will Leave Them Howling for More

All this talk about the Hostess liquidation and the end of the Twinkie left me wondering, what about the Drake’s Cakes? Drake’s is the maker of treats like Ding Dongs, Ho-Ho’s and Yodels. A subsidiary of Hostess, Drake’s seems to be the branch of the company that handles the chocolate. Over Thanksgiving, we were talking about the demise of the Twinkie, and no one could remember the last time they’d had one, but a few of our party copped to eating Yodels on a semi-regular basis. So I wondered why there was no outcry about the Yodel. What is Drake’s, like the red-headed stepchild of Hostess, Inc.?

So, I set out to copy the Yodel, even though there weren’t really any Yodel recipes on Pinterest. The closest thing you can find on the boards are Swiss Rolls, which look like this:

So, here is what I did:

First, I mixed the batter for a boxed Devil’s Food cake according to the instructions.

Then, I lined a jelly roll pan with aluminum foil

and poured the batter over the foil.

The cake then baked at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.

Once the cake had cooled to room temperature, I whipped up some marshmallow cream filling like the stuff that I had made for the  Copycat Twinkie’s.

1 cup of marshmallow fluff

1 cup softened butter

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/3 cup heavy whipping cream

2.5 cups confectioners sugar

Once those had mixed together to make a light fluffy icing, I spread it out over the cake, which was VERY fragile.

Because it was so fragile, it started to break apart as I rolled it up, even though I used a dish towel to roll it carefully.

So I took some parchment and wrapped the log, then wrapped it again in aluminum foil and stuck it in the freezer over night. It was much easier to cut when it was firm.

Then, I made the homemade Magic Shell topping like the one from a while back.

This is 1 pkg of semi-sweet chocolate chips and one stick of butter, microwaved on 1/2 power for about a minute and a half, until they are smooth enough to combine.

I tried dipping the cake pieces into the chocolate, but that was a huge mess, so I ended up using an icing spatula to spread it on one side. After it had hardened, I turned the cakes over and coated the other side with chocolate.

These were riDONKulously good. The Yodel fans from Thanksgiving even came by to taste-test them and proclaimed these as good as the original, “only fresher tasting”. I thought that was pretty high praise!