one 4-ounce bar Baker’s German’s Sweet Chocolate
½ cup boiling water
2 sticks butter
2 cups sugar 4 eggs, separated
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 ½ cups sifted cake flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup buttermilk
Melt chocolate in boiling water; cool and set aside. Cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Add egg yolks one at a time, beating well after each. Add chocolate and vanilla; mix well. Sift together flour, salt and soda. Add alternately with buttermilk to chocolate mixture; beat until smooth. Fold in stiffly beaten egg whites. Pour into three deep 8 or 9-inch layer pans, lined on bottoms with paper. Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes. Cool before frosting with coconut pecan frosting.
Coconut Pecan Frosting for German Chocolate Cake
1 cup evaporated milk
1 cup sugar
3 egg yolks
1 stick butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/3 cups flaked coconut
1 cup chopped pecans
Combine milk, sugar, egg yolks, margarine, and vanilla. Cook, stirring, over medium heat until thickened, about 12 minutes. Add coconut and pecans; beat until thick enough to spread. Spread between layers and on top of cake.
Note: This cake rose from the obscurity of a home kitchen to become an American classic and was first published, not in Germany, but in Dallas. A Texas homemaker sent the recipe for German's chocolate cake to a Dallas newspaper in the fall of 1957; the resulting spike in German's Sweet Chocolate sales put General Foods (which then owned Baker's Chocolate) on alert; the company quickly sent copies of the recipe and photos of the cake to newspapers across the nation. Everywhere the recipe was published, food editors were swamped with requests for information on where to buy the chocolate. In a year, sales jumped 73 percent. The cake's name comes from the sweet chocolate baking bar developed for Baker's Chocolate Co. in 1852 by Sam German. Hence the name Baker's German's Sweet Chocolate. However, in most recipes and products today, the apostrophe and the "s" have been dropped, fueling the assumption that it's German.
