Drake's Devil Dogs

Here's a clone recipe for a favorite east coast treat that could even fool Rosie O'Donnell. The snackfood - loving talk show hostess professes her love for these tasty Drake's goodies all the time on her daytime show. And who could blame her? It's hard not to relish the smooth, fluffy filling sandwiched between two tender devil's food cake fingers.

I'll take a DevilDog over a Twinkie any day of the week. For this clone recipe, we'll make the cakes from scratch. This will help us to create a flavor and texture closest to the original, although the color will be much lighter than the real thing (the miracles of food coloring). But if you're feeling especially lazy, you can certainly use adevil's food cake mix in place of the scratch recipe here.

Just make the filling with the recipe below and assemble your cakes the same way.

Cake

1 egg

1/2 cup shortening

1 1/4 cups granulated sugar

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup cocoa

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Filling

2 cups marshmallow creme (1 7-ounce jar)

1 cup shortening

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1/8 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons very hot water

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2. In a medium bowl, blend together the egg, shortening, and sugar with an electric mixer. Continue beating while adding the milk and vanilla.

3. In another bowl sift together remaining cake ingredients - flour, cocoa, salt, and baking powder.

4. Combine the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients and beat until smooth.

5. Spoon about a tablespoon of the batter in strips about 4 inches long and 1 inch wide on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Bake for 5 to 6 minutes or until the cakes are done. Cool.

6. In another bowl combine the marshmallow creme, shortening, powdered sugar and vanilla. Dissolve the 1/8 teaspoon of salt in the 2 teaspoons of very hot water in a small bowl. Add this salt solution to the filling mixture and beat on high speed with an electric mixer until the filling is smooth and fluffy.

7. When the cakes have cooled, spread about a tablespoon of filling on the face of one cake and top it off with another cake. Repeat with the remaining ingredients.Makes 20 to 24 snack cakes.