German chocolate cake
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
German Chocolate Cake is a layered chocolate cake filled and topped with a coconut-pecan frosting. Sweet baking chocolate is traditionally used for the chocolate flavor in the actual cake, but few recipes call for it today. The coconut and pecans are mixed into a sweetened and thickened cream base. Generally, a chocolate frosting is spread on the sides of the cake and piped around the circumference of the layers to hold in the filling. Maraschino cherries are an added touch.
[edit] History
This cake is actually not a traditional German dessert. The original recipe was sent by a homemaker in Dallas in 1957 to a newspaper in Texas. It used Baker's German's Sweet Chocolate, which was created in 1852 by an Englishman named Samuel German for the Baker's chocolate brand. Coconut is also a major baking product of the company.
The cake became quite popular and General Foods — which owned Baker's Chocolate at the time — sent the recipe to other newspapers in the country. Sales of the company are said to have increased by as much as 73%. The apostrophe and the "s" were accidentally dropped in subsequent publications, creating the "German Chocolate Cake" we know today. [1]
It has been suggested that the cake didn't strictly originate from this recipe. Similar buttermilk and chocolate cakes have been popular in the South for over 70 years.
