HCB: German Chocolate Cake

I had mixed feelings about this cake. On one hand, I love the chocolate cake base. I've made it last year for the chocolate ice cream cake and it was delicious. On the other hand, the combination of condensed milk, pecans, and coconut does not sound appetizing. I have nothing against the individual ingredients but together I'm not sure about them.

With all my hesitations, I was pretty glad that the cake is easy to put together. The chocolate cake starts off like most of Rose's oil based chocolate cake, mix cocoa powder with boiling water until smooth. Let cool to room temperature.

Next, combine the cooled cocoa powder mixture with the yolks and canola oil in the mixer. Whisk until incorporated. Add into it all the dry ingredients in two additions. Then add in the egg whites.

Pour into 2 pans. In this case, I used 2 6 inch pans since I make 40% of the recipe. Initially I wanted to make 1/2 the recipe and baked it in 2 7 inch pans, but given this cake feeds 14-16, I decided to make 40% of it.

 

For those of you fearing splitting recipe, it's not that scary. Let's say for this cake you want to make 40% also. On page 470 of the book Rose has listed all the cake pans and their volume. A 6 by 2 inches pan = 3 3/4 (3.75) cups and a 9 by 2 inches pan = 8 2/3 (8.67) cups. Using a calculator on my phone, I did the math: 3.75/8.67 = 0.43, rounded down it becomes 0.4 (40%).

Still with me?

Then I multiple all the weigh measurement in the book by 0.4 and wrote it down.

Writing it down in the book makes it so much easier. This way, I would avoid messing up and getting the wrong measurement for an item. Sure, the book is now not perfect. But if you're like me, you'd have smears of chocolate on some pages and drips of water on other pages.

Back to the cake, while the cake is baking, I made the frosting. Unlike some other frosting, this one is very easy. Mix the yolk with condensed milk and butter and cook over medium heat, stirring all the time! :) Once it thickened a bit, add in the vanilla, pecans, and coconut and cook for one minute.

Frosting the cake could not have been easier!!! I don't have to worry about being even, don't have to frost the sides. I was very happy about that :).

Tasting impressions:
Hubby liked it. He said it's pretty good. He also said that it doesn't look like a sweet cake. "It looks like there's cheese on it or something." As for me, I liked it as well. I can't say it would be on the repeat list, but maybe it would be something to bring to a party.