Gooey Chocolate-Caramel Cake

I made this for last night, to have at Autumn's scrapbooking fellowship thing. I was crossing my fingers that this would turn out good, after the fiasco with the onion dip, since many of the same people would be partaking. This was very very good, so I was like "phew." One of my many friends named Becky makes a recipe like this, I'm not sure if it's exactly like this one or not, but when I've had it before it's been very good. Hers is called something different though. This one is from BH&G 5 IF.

Gooey Chocolate-Caramel Cake
1 pkg 2 layer size chocolate cake mix
1 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk
1 12 oz jar caramel ice cream topping
1 8 oz carton cool whip
chopped skor bars, optional

Prepare cake mix by pkg directions and bake in 13x9 pan. Cool cake in pan on wire rack. Using the handle of a wooden spoon, poke holes about 1 inch apart over surface of cake. Pour sweetened condensed milk and caramel topping over cake. Spread cool whip evenly over the top. Before serving, sprinkle with skor bars. Store leftover cake in fridge for up to 24 hours.

So, I thought I had so much caramel topping in the fridge that I didn't buy any. Turns out, I had barely any. So I had to make caramel to put on top of this. Making caramel is not hard, I have a recipe from Becky (a different one) that she always makes to pour over popcorn. It is 1 cup of brown sugar, 1 stick of butter, and 1/8 cup corn syrup. Put it all in a saucepan, heat over medium heat until it is a full roiling boil, then let cool. I think using this caramel made the cake not as sticky as it would have been with commercial topping (not as "gooey," as the title of the recipe would have you think) but it was very very good. That homemade caramel I could just eat right out of the pan with a big spoon. We all had at least one piece of the cake, Steve had 2, I had 2 (but they were small ones). Overall a successful recipe. A keeper for sure.