This was my birthday cake this year, it just might be my favorite cake ever!

You’ll notice that this isn’t called “German Chocolate Cake”, that’s because there is nothing German about it, it is an all American dessert.  In the 1800′s a man by the name of Sam German, developed a dark baking chocolate for the Baker’s chocolate company.  This cake was named for him.

As much as I love this cake, in my experience there are more bad versions of this than good ones.  Grocery stores tend to carry a chocolate layer cake with a little coconut pecan icing slapped on top, THAT’S THE BEST PART!  Many recipes just aren’t chocolaty enough for me, I set out to fix that.  I found a recipe that had twice as much chocolate, and I split it into 4 layers and spread coconut pecan icing between each.  YUM!

Get out your printable recipe and let’s get started!

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease and flour your pans, line the bottoms with parchment.  This is such a fudgy cake that I really recommend the parchment on the bottom.

First lets start by melting the chocolate, since we’re going to have to let it cool.  I didn’t use “Germans Chocolate” in this recipe, it costs double what the semi-sweet costs, and there really isn’t enough difference to justify the price.  So go ahead and use the semi-sweet instead, it will work wonderfully.

Combine the chopped chocolate and water in a microwave safe bowl.

Pop it in the microwave and melt using 30 second increments, stirring well after each increment.  Be careful not to over do it, you don’t want to burn the chocolate, because there is no saving it.

Set aside and let cool down.

Combine your dry ingredients and give them a stir.  Set aside

I know this takes lots of bowls and is a fairly big project, but trust me, it’s worth it!

Now take the soft, room temperature butter and sugar and cream with an electric mixer for at least 5 minutes scraping bowl as needed.

This is not creamed enough, it’s still a bit clumpy.

This is more like it.

Why is this important?  In a creaming method cake this is the beginning of building the structure.  Improper creaming and not creating bubbles can cause a cake to have a cornbread type texture, definitely not what we are going for here.

Now that we have the creaming done properly, let’s add the egg yolks, one at a time beating until well combined.

Once the egg yolks are mixed in, add the cooled chocolate and vanilla extract.  Make sure that the chocolate is cool, we don’t want to melt the butter and ruin that creaming that we did.

Mix it in well.

Next we’re going to add the flour mixture and the buttermilk.  We’re going to alternate these.  This accomplishes two things, first, if you added all of the liquid to the butter mixture, it would separate, if you added all of the flour first, it would be too thick, and hard to incorporate the liquid.  This also insures a nice, smooth batter.

Always start with 1/3 (just eyeball it) of the flour mixture, and mix until combined.

then when the first addition of the flour is mixed in, now add half of the buttermilk.

Repeat this process until all of the flour and buttermilk are added.

Set this aside, and get another bowl ready…

Now with very clean beaters and clean bowl, beat the egg whites to stiff peaks

Once stiff peaks have formed, place into the bowl of batter, and carefully fold  the egg whites into the batter.

Until no streaks remain, making sure that you are pulling all of the batter from the bottom of the bowl.

Now pour into your prepared pans and bake.

Now how long do we bake this?  I don’t know.  Every oven is different, different pan sizes will make a difference, there are too many variables to give an exact time.  I would start checking around 25-30 minutes and keep checking until a toothpick come out almost clean with no batter, but a few moist crumbs are OK.

once baked, let them sit in their pans for about 10 minutes.  After 10 minutes, loosen the cakes from the pans by running a thin knife around the edges, and invert onto a cooling rack.  Let cool completely.

Let cool completely.

Now the coconut pecan icing recipe is enough to frost and fill a 2 layer cake, but I love to split the layers and create 4 thin layers, for a great cake to icing ratio, so I only had enough to fill and top, and had to cover the sides with buttercream, if you want a 4 layer cake and have it covered entirely with coconut pecan icing, feel free to double the  coconut pecan icing recipe.

This is such a rich and fudgy cake, it was everything that I was hoping for in a German’s Chocolate cake, I know that it is a bit of a procedure, but for me it is soooo worth it once in a while.  I hope that you give it a try.

German Chocolate Cake printable recipe

Coconut pecan frosting recipe

Red velvet cake isn’t really a chocolate cake, as many think.  It is a buttermilk cake dyed red.  I’m willing to bet that the cocoa powder was originally added to help mask the bitterness of the red dye, red dye used to be very bitter, it’s better now!

I have made many recipes for red velvet cake.  Most of the traditional recipes have left something to be desired, they would often come out dry, not great for cake.  I’ve seen many recipes call for huge amounts of vegetable oil to combat this problem, then I came across this recipe, and all that changed!

Who would have known that such a simple, easy to mix recipe would be “the one”, my go to red velvet?

Get your stuff

Yes that’s a big bottle of red dye.  Want to avoid red dye?  Make a different cake, red velvet cake contains red dye, plain and simple.  There are other recipes out there that mess around with beet juice, but after baking they just turn brown and don’t resemble red velvet cake, and taste of beets.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, grease and flour 2 -8″ round cake pans or a 9×13″ pan.  I also recommend lining the bottom of the pans with parchment.

Combine the sugar, flour, salt, baking soda, and cocoa powder in a large bowl, whisk to combine.  If you have lumpy cocoa powder, I would recommend sifting.

Now just mix together the wet ingredients (the rest of the ingredients) and pour into the dry.  Mix it up.

No really, that’s it, batter’s done!  Now just place it in the baking pan(s) and pop it in the oven.  Now I can’t give you an exact bake time, everyone’s oven is different.  Bake until it is done, start checking at about 25 minutes.  It’s done when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out without batter on it, just a few moist crumbs.  Try not to over bake it.

Let cool in the pans for about 10 minutes then remove to a cooling rack.  Cool completely before icing the cakes.  For a double layer cake like this, I used a double batch of this cream cheese icing recipe.  Now I’ve heard that some know this cake with a whole different icing, an icing that is made with a flour roux, so here is that recipe, I’d make a double batch of that too.  I will say that I prefer the cream cheese, but this is your cake, make it the way that makes you happy!

This makes me happy!

Now go make it!

Click here for printable recipe.

Pound cake, it’s a southern staple.  Pound cake isn’t just a delivery system for strawberries, but a dessert appreciated on its own.  Many southern families have a favorite recipe.  This one was given to me by a friend, it is FANTASTIC and addictive.  Seriously, I can’t stop picking at it.

I hadn’t heard of five flavor pound cake until I moved to the south and to be honest, I didn’t know what to think of it, I was suspicious.  Turns out that it is wonderful, a flavor that you can’t quite figure out.  All five flavorings meld into this unique taste sensation, and did I mention that it’s wonderful?

If you are a pound cake purist, look the other way, this recipe isn’t for you.  For those who like to eat cake, read on!  Basic pure pound cake is 1 pound flour, 1 pound butter, 1 pound eggs, and 1 pound sugar with a little flavor.  This is a “modern” take on pound cake.

This cake is made with the traditional creaming method.

Grab your fixin’s, preheat the oven to 325 degrees and grease and flour 1-10″ tube pan or 2 9×5″ loaf pans  Having all ingredients at room temperature is recommended for this recipe, so take out everything at least an hour before starting the cake.

Why yes, I did happen to have all of these flavors hanging around, and anyone who knows me wouldn’t be surprised.

Start off by beating together the shortening and butter.  Have a hydrogenated fat phobia (I usually do) then go with all butter, it’ll be fine.  I’m making it just as the recipe was given to me, why mess with a great recipe?

Then gradually add the sugar while the mixer is running.  Cream the mixture until very light and fluffy, don’t skimp on this step, let the mixer run for about 5 minutes scraping the bowl as needed, until it looks like this, fluffy and lighter in color.

Now beat the eggs well, and add them slowly to the creamed butter and sugar mixture.

Beat until well incorporated, scraping the bowl as needed.

Now measure out the milk, and add the flavorings to that.

Measure out the flour and other dry ingredients and whisk or sift together.

Add approx 1/3 of the flour and blend well

add approx 1/3 of the milk mixture and mix well. Scrape bowl if needed

Repeat alternating the flour and milk mixture until everything is blended in.  The reason that we alternate like this, is to help avoid lumps.  If you added the milk and flour all at once it could end up making lumps that you would have to beat out, incorporating air bubbles, and developing gluten and that’s not what we are going for here.

Now you should have a velvety smooth batter, ready for the pans.  This recipe makes 4 pounds of batter, enough for a standard tube pan or two standard 9×5″ loaf pans.  Make sure that they are greased and floured well.  I’m using 2 loaf pans today.

If you bake 2 loaves like I did, they will take about an hour to bake, if you bake all of the batter in a large tube/angel food cake pan, it will take about 1 1/2 hours.  Remember every oven is different, so these times are approximates, bake them until they test done!

The cake may fall a bit as it cools, but that’s OK, it will fall a little less in a tube pan.  Let cool for about 10 minutes in the pan, then remove to a cooling rack.

Slice and serve.  It’ll have a delicious, crisp sugary top.  This cake really needs nothing extra, it’s great on its own.  This pound cake is even better the next day when the flavors have had a change to get to know each other.

Now go make it!

Click here for printable recipe

YUM..

Brownies and cheesecake, that’s all I have to say.

I had a vision, a brownie on the bottom of a cheesecake was great, but why not little brownies all over the top?  Then the light bulb appeared over my head

The filling for this cheesecake comes from Crumbboss.com , This is a professional pastry chef in NJ, and her attention deficit best friend (I say that in the nicest possible way) that make videos on Youtube.  There is a ton of awesome information on these videos, they are a bit chaotic, but I can hardly fault these women for having fun!

Here’s what you’ll need

• 1 recipe for brownies found here
• 3 8 oz. packages cream cheese
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 6 eggs
• 3 oz. heavy cream or sour cream
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 3/4 cup semi sweet chocolate chips

First we are going to make that brownie recipe, mixed just as directed, but divided into two separate pans,   a 9″ springform and an 8″ square baking pan.  We’re going to make the cheesecake “crust” in the springform and tiny brownies in the other.  You’ll only have to bake these for 15-20 minutes since they are quite a bit thinner than when the recipe is baked all in one pan.  If you choose to use a brownie mix (I won’t judge) go for the “family size” that is made in a 9×13 pan.

Let those cool for a bit while we make the filling.

Now this filling recipe was a new one for me.  I was curious about the 6 eggs in the recipe, that’s double the amount that I usually use in a cheesecake this size, but coming from a professional pastry chef, I was confident that it would be awesome, and it was!  6 eggs created a nice firm cheesecake, but was still very creamy.  Lets get the filling started.

This is crazy simple.

place cream cheese (room temperature) in the bowl of a mixer and mix until smooth, add the sugar beat until smooth.

Toss in the vanilla.

Now beat in the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition, remember we’re not whipping the tar out of it!

Scrape down the bowl as needed.

Add the cream and mix to combine

Wrap that springform pan with the brownie in it with heavy duty aluminum foil.  Pour batter into pan, place pan in water bath.

bake that for 45 minutes or 1 hour it should jiggle like jello and be slightly firm around the edges.  Try not to over bake, you want a nice creamy cheesecake without cracks.

here’s what you’ll get, let it rest in that water bath for 1 hour before chilling

Chill for at least 4 hours or overnight.

Remove from pan and place on serving plate.

Make the ganache, by bringing 1/2 cup of heavy cream to a boil in the microwave.  Place the chocolate chips into the hot cream and let sit for a minute.

Now whisk lightly, and if all you have is the beater of a mixer because you’ve been cooking all day, that will do too.

Whisk until smooth.

now resist dragging your finger through it..

Remember those brownies in the other pan?  Now is time to use them.  Cut ‘em into little mini brownies

with your ganache, you’ll want to glaze the top of the cheesecake.  Pour some into the middle and gently spread over the top pushing just a little over the edges for a drizzled look.

Now place those tiny brownies over the top of the cheesecake. and drizzle with more ganache

Yay for artistic blur….

and here is the finished product sans blur

Click here for printable recipe