Holiday Entertaining - Yule Log Cake

My friend Noel had Dale and me over last night and I made another yule log cake to bring along. It turned out great. Here's the recipe that came with the Nordic Ware cake pan.

Marble Yule Log

1(13.25 oz) box yellow cake mix [I could only find a 15.25 oz. box so I left a little of it out.]

4 eggs

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup water

3/4 cup sour cream [An 8 oz. container did the trick.]

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips, melted [To melt chips I put them in small microwave safe bowl, added a little half and half and nuked for 90 seconds stirring every 30 seconds.]

Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour yule log cake pan [I used Pam.]; set aside. In large bowl, combine cake mix, eggs, sour cream, oil, water, sugar and vanilla. Beat on medium speed, 2 minutes, scraping bowl often [I didn't use electric mixer.]. Remove one-third of the batter and place in smaller bowl; set remaining batter aside. Stir melted chocolate chips into batter in the smaller bowl. Spoon half of the vanilla batter and half of the chocolate batter into prepared pan. Using a small spatula, gently swirl batters together. Spoon remaining batter into pan and swirl again. Bake for 40-45 minutes, until a toothpick [I used a butter knife.] comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes in pan; invert onto cooling rack and cool cake completely [I let it cool in the pan the whole time.] Decorate as desired [I used red and green "cake writing gel" for the berries and leaves.].