Cake #7: German's Chocolate Cake

I finally had to do it. I skipped ahead in the book from page 54 to page 182 only because a good friend was having a birthday party and I offered to make the cake. Then he requested German Chocolate Cake, which is almost at the very end of the book! But I assumed I would be able to tackle it, and in the end, I did. But it wasn't smooth. Which is why it's a darn good thing I have a blog....
First of all, I learned that German's Chocolate Cake is not German at all! It's named after an English dude with the last name "German". And most people think of the coconut/pecan frosting when they think of this cake, which is funny- because its the only one (of 3) parts to the cake that doesn't contain any German's baker's chocolate. It's also the most difficult part of baking this cake from scratch. But, it's probably way better than the stuff you buy in the can.
So, I started on April 15th- making the cake, then the coconut/pecan frosting, then the chocolate frosting.
Luckily, the pecan/coconut frosting calls for 3 egg yolks. Because the cake calls for 4 eggs separated, and I gave it 3 attempts (saving the ruined yolks for the frosting) before I had my husband break the eggs and separate them nicely. He said I wasn't graceful enough. I think I need to learn how to break an egg without a bunch of shell pieces getting into it before I can tackle the separating task.
Other than the separating, the cake part wasn't too bad. I melted the chocolate by breaking it up and adding 1/2 c. boiling water, and stirring until smooth.
The cake called for buttermilk, and I had some dried buttermilk powder which I mixed with water, 1/4 c dry milk to 10 oz water. It seemed to work pretty well- there were just a few small buttermilk powder chunks in the milk.
For every cake recipe this year so far, I have put the butter out to get it to room temp. before starting the cake. Well, it's officially hot enough now that I need to reduce the amount of time I let the butter warm up- they were getting pretty liquidy when I opened each stick!
The cookbook says to use 2 Kitchen Aid bowls for the recipe- one for the cake ingredients and the other for the egg whites. i only have one bowl, so I scraped the cake batter out, cleaned the bowl and whisked the egg whites until they showed peaks. Eggs are amazing things. Then I added the cake batter to the peaky whites and poof! The whites came to the top anyway so that method worked pretty well. Then I folded them in gently, about 20 times. I poured the batter into my well-greased cake pans and baked the cakes for about 30 min.
But the darn things didn't stay together. They came out of those pans pretty messy, and I reconstructed them hoping the frosting would cover it all up:

The recipe called for a double boiler, so we constructed one out of a cast iron pan with soy sauce holders and a sauce pan on top:
The double boiler was used for the coconut/pecan frosting, which was not very fun to make because:
You add water, sweetened condensed milk (super thick stuff) and egg yolks to the sauce pan over the simmering water in the double boiler and stir it forever until it "has thickened" I maybe misread that or got impatient because I stirred it until it just started to thicken, so I probably should have waited a little longer. Then you add butter and vanilla extract and whisk. Meanwhile, with your other hand or maybe your feet, the book suggests putting pecans and coconut in a food processor. Maybe because the sink was already full of dishes, or because I was out of counter space, I decided to use a small chopper instead, and that worked just as well, it just took a little extra energy on my part. And I had that energy to spare since I was maybe angry at the cake at this point.
Above: chopped pecans and coconut.

Then I made the "optional" chocolate frosting for the sides of the cake. This should NOT be optional because it was awesome. In fact, I think I'm going to make this frosting for other cakes, it was AWESOME. So awesome, I'm going to tell you how to make it!

First, take a 1/2 pkg (or 2 oz.) of German's Baker's Chocolate and melt it in the double boiler. You can't really tell when it's melted, it stays together. You'll have to poke it and watch it go "aaaaah". Or wait, maybe that was me going "aaaaah". Meanwhile, after you've washed your Kitchen Aid bowl for the 2nd time, throw in a stick of butter and the melted chocolate (see photo above) and beat it on medium speed. Add 1 1/2 c. confectioners' sugar slowly. Then add 1 t. vanilla extract (you can make your own! I will post a blog in a few days!) Then gradually add 1 1/2 T milk and beat it until the frosting has a "spreadable consistency". Stick your finger in there and taste it. You will go "aaaaah". Or, maybe, "damn! that's good!"
Now, learn from my mistakes, and DO NOT REFRIGERATE! I did, and when I took it out to spread it on April 17th (2 days later) it was hard. Too hard to spread on anything. So I added some milk and stirred it well, so that it was spreadable, but it wasn't exactly frosting consistency and it didn't exactly look pretty. But, I had just gotten some decorating squeeze tubes from a Pampered Chef party and I really wanted to try them out. So I brought the cake and the frostings to the party, resuscitated the chocolate frosting, and put it in the squeeze tube. After spreading the coconut/pecan frosting between the two cake layers and on top of the cake, I attempted making little star patterns around the top edge to give it a WOW effect. After a few "stars" squirted out (which didn't really resemble anything like a star) I gave it a little squeeze-and---- the entire tube of frosting squirted out at the speed of light all over the top of the cake, all over the counter top, all over the toaster and all the other stuff on the counter, and I got to hear sounds of laughter behind me from the host of the party. Although it made her day and she told EVERYONE at the party about my cake decorating disaster, I decided to use something with an actual "spreadable consistency" next time I attempt to use those decorating tubes. Or else I'll decide that just because I can bake a cake, that doesn't mean I can decorate it.