Friday

Baking With Bliss, German Chocolate Cake

I will start this post with my usual disclaimer * I am not a food blogger, I am a food eater*.

I cook.  I eat.  And I do plenty of both.

I do not enjoy taking photos of the steps involved to do either of those things, but sometimes when a recipe is worth passing along I've just gotta do it.

German Chocolate Cake Bliss-ranch.com
German Chocolate Cake
Not being a food blogger means several things.....

1.  If you choose to read this post you will have to suffer through few and often crappy photos.  Crappy by food bloggers standards anyway.

2.  If you are reading only for the recipe, stop now and just click the link at the bottom to the original recipe.  I don't take credit for other peoples work, so I won't reprint the full recipe here.

3. The post will probably be long.  I tend to write more in edible posts to compensate for not being a food stylist.

German Chocolate Cake Bliss-ranch.com
Stained Glass/Vintage Silverware Ipad/Cookbook Stand, by Moi

The Brawn of the operation had himself a birthday.

I asked him what kind of cake he would like to celebrate the occasion.  For 30 years of marriage the man has always said, "it don't matter", so I would make what ever I was in the mood for at the time.

Last night I asked and he said, "German Chocolate".

German Chocolate Cake Bliss-ranch.com
Clay Disk From My Brown Sugar Canister
A German chocolate cake request isn't unusual around here since a couple of our kids routinely ask for one on their birthday.  I've also gone through more than a few online recipes only to always come back to my original one.

Original as in me and a Betty Crocker cake mix, but with homemade frosting.

So once again I did a Pinterest search to see if there was a recipe that I hadn't noticed before (you can follow my pin boards here).

Eureka!

Miss Yammie claims this is the cake she will be remembered for.  But she's only 21 so I hope she lives to be 90 with more things than a cake to be remembered for.

But darnnit I want to be remembered for an amazing cake, I'm closer to 90 than she is, so Yammie's cake is the one that I decided would be baked in my kitchen.

Misadventure Tip #1.  Read ALL the way through a new recipe, not just the part you think you need to scan (like ingredients).

German Chocolate Cake Bliss-ranch.com

I was lucky that I had just the right amount of eggs, much to the dismay of my daughter who eats an egg every day and awoke to find none.

The recipe says *dark* cocoa and I wasn't sure if my cocoa powder was dark or not, but seems to be.

German Chocolate Cake Bliss-ranch.com

I followed the directions to a T, well until of course when the time came and it started to be iffy due to my not reading through the directions.

I didn't have three size 8 round pans.  I had two, plus this heart shaped thing I figured I could put in a spring form pan and have the top layer shaped like a heart.

German Chocolate Cake Bliss-ranch.com

Sweet huh?

No.  I'll get to that.

I continued on, this cake is all mixed by hand, and after the sugar was added I decided it was time to have a taste.  Mmmmm, pretty darn good so far, I was impressed.

By the end of the ingredient adding I concluded this was the best tasting chocolate cake batter I had ever had, I was getting anxious now.

Then my phone rang.  I didn't answer it.  Then my ipad started to quack.

Apparently Brawn changed some settings on his phone while I was baking and now his phone was ringing, or quacking as per my ipad settings, on the recipe in front of me.

Very annoying.

Instructions were given to him to make that stop immediately!

Then I got several texts, and since usually only my kids call or text I figured I better see what is up.  I was in the zone, the baking zone, and there were too many interruptions as I was concentrating on getting this cake right.

So while I was stealthily tasting the chocolate batter, I was also invited to lunch with a niece who was in town.  Great, I have till 5:00 to get the cake done.

German Chocolate Cake Bliss-ranch.com

Enter the next issue with baking that I have.

Divide the batter evenly between the three pans.

Evenly.  How do people do that?

I started with the two round pans and it became apparent real fast that what I thought was a huge bowl of batter wasn't really as much when it started to go in the pans.

I scooped batter and made a decent mess.

German Chocolate Cake Bliss-ranch.com

I continued on and got one part into the heart shape pan before I thought.... are my pans actually 8 inches?????

NOPE.

Mine were a bit over 9 inches, which was fine, I just scraped the batter out of the spring form heart shape thing back into the big bowl and evenly divided batter between the two round pans instead..... and I also made more chocolatey mess.

If my cake would not have three layers, I could live with that.

Misadventure Tip #2... Know your oven.  Mine cooks faster always then recipes state. I set my timer for less time, but maybe should of had even a bit less.

Lampwork Bead Cake Tester, Bliss-Ranch.com

Tip #3...... test your cake like me!  I use a one of a kind cake tester, and it has never failed me.  If Beth at One 30 One Design doesn't have something you like in her Etsy shop, just ask her for the colors you are looking for.

German Chocolate Cake Bliss-ranch.com

Tip #4..... I cool my cakes with a piece of wax paper over the top of the pan.  A wise old baker told me one time that doing so sends the moisture back into the cake instead of sending it out and making the cake dry.

I have no idea if this tip is real or can be debunked, but I always do it anyway.

German Chocolate Cake Bliss-ranch.com
Two Layers Done
I got out my decorating press thing and squirted some decorative frosting plops on the top of the cake and filled the gap where cake met cake stand.  I wanted it to look like I had fussed just a bit more than usual.

Since I never decorate my cakes, any frosting plop was going to look like I had fussed more.

German Chocolate Cake Bliss-ranch.com

Now Miss Yammie had three wonderful cake layers from her 8 inch pans.

I was going to have two layers from 9 inch pans so I cut one of the 9 inchers' in half so I ended up with three layers.

Really, it's got German Chocolate frosting for gosh sakes, get all that coconut goodness everywhere you can, specially in your mouth.

German Chocolate Cake Bliss-ranch.com

The outside of the cake is covered in Yammie's chocolate frosting recipe.  I did alter this a bit, I didn't use all the powdered sugar thinking then it would not be quite as sweet, yet I still had a lot of frosting left.  Not sure how I managed to do that.

When I make this again, and I will, I might cut the outside frosting in half.  Yammie has a bunch of younger siblings to help her eat the leftovers.

Here, leftover frosting just goes to my thighs.

German Chocolate Cake Bliss-ranch.com

So you wanna know what I thought of Yammie's cake right?

Well........ best German Chocolate cake I have ever made.  Thanks to Yammie.







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10 comments :

  1. This is my kid's favorite cake--I have not seen this recipe but I will pull it up and save it....and I read every word...and I will read EVERY word of the recipe before I start. I might, or might not,have 8" pans. lol Have a great day- xo Diana

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  2. That looks amazing and I'm not even a big fan of German chocolate cake. I just found dark cocoa powder recently.

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  3. OH this looks delicious! That cake could go to your thighs just looking at it! I just used my cake tester yesterday...making banana maple cupcakes...it always works great! Happy Birthday to Brawn!

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  4. Looks delish and I need a piece to go with my coffee right about now. Mmmm....I could eat the coconut part with a spoon!

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  5. YUM! German chocolate cake makes me think of my "Grandpa Graber"...it was his favorite. Sadly, I don't bake...ever ;) My poor kids will have to come to your house...

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  6. This looks so yummy. I wish I had people that would help me eat German chocolate cake. Because if you think that extra frosting goes to your hips, how about a whole cake? All the food bloggers have 8 inch cake pans. Who are they?????

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  7. If only I had a slice of cake to go with my morning tea! My stomach growled throughout the reading of this entire post! :) Linda

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  8. This sounded like quite the adventure. Really looks great. I'm a raw batter eater.

    Cindy

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  9. Your cake looks delicious and now I want cake for breakfast!

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  10. CAN. NOT. WAIT. To try this!

    Thanks, Bliss!
    And... thanks, Yammie!

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