How to Make German Chocolate Cake

Today on Sugar Spun Run I'll be showing you how to make a German chocolate cake. Hey everyone it's Sam here and I'm really excited to be sharing my version of German chocolate cake with you today. Now my version is a little bit different from the traditional version. Traditionally German chocolate cake is made with German chocolate. It's a pretty light almost dry cake that's made by whipping egg whites and no matter how many times and how many different variations I tried of making this type of cake it honestly just didn't hold a candle to the rich dense moist chocolate cake that I've already shared on my blog and that my family is basically obsessed with. So if you're looking for that traditional old-fashioned recipe you're actually not going to find it here. You are going to find a great decadent cake with that coconut caramel frosting. I think you're really going to love this one and I hope you do try it out. But I just wanted to give you the heads up it's a little different from traditional drier and not as good German chocolate cake. Alright so if you're still with me to get started you'll want to pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Next you are going to need 1 and 3 fourths cup of all-purpose flour. We're going to add this to a large bowl. We're also going to be adding 1 cup of granulated sugar along with 1 cup of firmly packed light brown sugar. Next you'll need 3 fourths cup of natural cocoa powder. And one thing I like to add to make my chocolate cake even richer and more chocolatey tasting is 1 and 1 half teaspoons of instant coffee. Now this is optional it's not going to make your cake taste like coffee but it is really going to amp up that chocolate flavor. We'll also add 1 and 1 half teaspoons of baking soda and just 3 fourths teaspoon of salt. Now we're going to stir everything together until it's completely combined. Now you can certainly do this by hand because I'm going to be enlisting my electric mixer in a little bit I'm just going to go ahead and use this right now. The next thing you're going to need is 1 half cup of either vegetable or canola oil. Canola is my personal preference but any neutral oil will work just fine. Now for my chocolate cake I like to use a blend of oil and butter for the best flavor and the best possible texture. If we were only to use butter the cake wouldn't be quite as moist as I like it to be. If we were only to use oil it wouldn't be quite as flavorful as I like it. So we've added our oil now you're going to need 1 half cup or 1 stick of unsalted butter and you want this to be melted. We'll use our mixer to stir everything together until it's nicely combined and your batter is going to get pretty thick at this point you just want to make sure everything's nicely combined. Next you're going to need 2 large eggs plus 1 egg yolk. This extra yolk helps give our cake a nice tender crumb. It keeps it nice and moist. We don't want to add that extra white because it would make the cake a bit too dry, at least a bit too dry for my liking. Ideally these should be at room temperature when you add them to your cake. We'll also add one and a half teaspoons of vanilla extract and just stir everything together until it's nicely combined. Now with my mixer on low speed I'm just going to gradually add one cup of buttermilk and I just do this gradually that way my mixer doesn't send buttermilk flying everywhere. The last ingredient you need for your chocolate cake is one half cup of very hot or boiling water. It is very important that this water be very hot. That way it helps to bloom the cocoa powder which is going to give you a really rich chocolatey flavor which as I already mentioned is what I love about this cake. Make sure to keep your mixer on low speed that way you don't splatter yourself with this water. Once your cake batter appears to be well combined you're going to want to still grab a spatula and just scrape the sides and bottom of this bowl. It's so important that your batter be nice and cohesive and everything be really well combined. You don't want any flour or any thick pieces of batter or portions of batter sitting at the bottom of your bowl. And yes this is a thin liquidy batter it's supposed to look like this don't panic. At this point our batter is looking pretty good so we can go ahead and portion it into our cake pans. You are going to need two nine inch cake pans for this recipe and you'll want to make sure you either grease and flour the sides of the pan or go ahead and spray the sides with baking spray. Make sure if you use baking spray it's one that is made with flour that way your cake doesn't stick. You don't want to just use a canola or vegetable oil spray. I've sprayed the sides of these and then for the bottom of the cakes you're going to want to line them with parchment paper rounds. So all I did to make these was I just traced the bottom of the pan with a pencil and then cut out inside that pencil mark to have a nice little round that fits nicely into my cake pan. If you don't have parchment paper you absolutely can grease and flour or spray with baking spray the bottom of your cake pans, but the parchment paper is just such a nice security. I've never had any cake stick when I use parchment paper. Now I'm just going to divide my cake batter evenly into these two pans. Now we'll take these over to our 350 degree fahrenheit oven where we're going to bake them for 25 to 30 minutes. So once those cakes are in the oven we're going to go ahead and prep our coconut caramel filling or frosting. Now while the cake might not be quite so traditional this frosting really is. I've only made a few subtle changes just to really enhance that caramel flavor. Now we're going to head over to our stovetop to make this frosting. You're going to need a medium sized saucepan. You're going to need one cup of evaporated milk for this recipe. Now this can is much more than a cup. I'm just going to pour out one cup and you're going to want to reserve the extra. I like to use a little bit in the chocolate frosting too. We're going to add four large egg yolks and these are just the yolks and not the whites. And whisk together the yolks and the evaporated milk until the egg yolks are nicely broken up. Next we're going to add one stick of unsalted butter and I like to cut this up into tablespoon sized pieces before adding it into my saucepan. We'll also add a half cup of granulated sugar and a half cup of firmly packed light brown sugar. I also like to add just a fourth teaspoon of salt. Now you'll want to turn your stovetop heat to medium low and we're going to stir everything together until the butter is melted and your mixture becomes a nice golden brown color and it begins to thicken. Now you'll want to stir everything frequently while this mixture cooks and you're going to cook until it darkens in color a little bit. It should be a nice golden brown and it should be slightly thickened. It is going to take some time for this mixture to thicken. I never bring it to a boil. I keep my heat on medium low the whole time because if you crank your heat up too high you actually are going to end up cooking your egg yolks and that could make you have to toss the whole thing out. Don't crank up the heat. Now keep in mind this mixture is going to thicken up even more as it cools to room temperature but you just need it to be a little bit thick and you don't want it to be completely runny. All right this is looking pretty good right now so I'm going to remove it from the stovetop and we are going to stir in one teaspoon of vanilla extract. And we'll also add one cup of chopped pecans. Now for a really good flavor I highly recommend that you toast these pecans before you add them to your mixture. The best way to do that is to buy pecan halves, layer them on a baking sheet, cook them on 350 degrees for about five to eight minutes or until they smell really nice. Then you'll want to let them cool, chop them up, and then add them into your mixture. Finally we're going to be adding two cups of sweetened shredded coconut. Stir everything together until it's really nicely combined and now we're just going to let this sit until it cools. Now you want it to be at room temperature before you add it to your cake otherwise you're going to end up melting the frosting that we're going to be adding. One thing I like to do to speed up the cooling process a little bit is just transfer this to a different bowl just because this pot that we put it in is so hot. So switch it over to a different bowl. Now right around the time you finish making your coconut filling or a couple minutes after your cakes should be just about finished baking. I'm going to go ahead and check these and the best way that I've found to check that my cakes are done is use the toothpick test. Just insert a toothpick in the center and if it comes out clean or with a few moist crumbs but no wet batter then they're finished baking. I'm going to let these cool for about 10 to 15 minutes and then I'll invert them on a cooling rack and let those cool completely before we go ahead and frost our cake. You have some time at this point while we're waiting for our coconut filling to cool, we're waiting for our cakes to cool, so you can either make your chocolate frosting now or you can wait until everything is cooled down before making it. Whatever you do, do not assemble your cakes until both the cakes and the filling are completely cool. This could take over an hour. Now I'm going to go ahead and start my frosting and the first thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to need two sticks or one cup of salted butter. We're going to add just some of our powdered sugar in with this butter. You're going to need three and a half cups total. I'm just going to add a little bit at a time that way we don't send powdered sugar flying everywhere. Now one thing I should mention about frosting your German chocolate cake is that a lot of traditional recipes don't actually use a frosting. They just use the chocolate cake, layer it with some of the caramel coconut filling, another layer of cake, a little bit more caramel coconut filling, and that's it. That's how you make German chocolate cake. I like a rich definite cake, so I'm going to be using this chocolate frosting today, but I just wanted to let you know that it is optional. Now you're definitely going to want to use an electric mixer to make your frosting. It's going to make the job a lot easier and either a hand mixer or an electric stand mixer will work just fine. Once your powdered sugar is mostly absorbed, we're going to add our cocoa powder and you'll need one half cup of natural cocoa powder. Now right now we have a pretty thick fudgy chocolate frosting. We're going to want to thin this out a bit so that we can easily ice our cake. We're going to start by adding just a teaspoon of vanilla extract. Now the vanilla extract is really for flavor and not for thinning out the icing, but we're also going to be adding two tablespoons of the evaporated milk that we reserved from earlier. If you happen to toss your evaporated milk, don't worry, you can just use regular milk or even heavy cream instead. All right, at this point we have our cakes prepped, our coconut filling prepped, and our frosting prepped, so all that's left to do is to assemble our German chocolate cake. Now remember everything needs to be completely cooled before you do this, otherwise you're going to have a melting mess. Now the first thing you're going to need is you're going to want to grab your first cake round and put that on your serving platter. Now I'm going to be putting a lot of my coconut filling right in the middle, but before I do that I like to make a little dam around the rim of my cake. This just helps hold everything in and it's going to make it easier when I go to ice the outside of my cake. To do this I just put about a quarter to a third of my chocolate frosting in a piping bag and I'm just going to pipe that dam. Now we'll grab our coconut filling and half of that is going to go on top of our first cake layer. We'll smooth this coconut layer out a bit with a spatula and now we'll top this with our second cake layer. Now before we add our second half of the coconut filling, we're actually going to go ahead and ice the whole cake. You just need a really thin layer on the top because we're going to be covering this with our coconut layer. Once you've frosted your whole cake you're going to want to grab that frosting you reserved for the dam and you could just pipe a circle around the outside of the top of the cake. I like to use a pretty piping tip and just do a decorative border around the side. Today for this cake I'm going to be using a Wilton 2D. I'm just going to make a pretty border around the outside then grab the rest of your caramel filling and we're going to fit that inside of that border. All right now that we've decorated all that's left to do is dig in. And that is how you make German chocolate cake or at least my version of German chocolate cake completely from scratch. Really hope you guys enjoyed today's recipe and if you try this one out please let me know what you think. I am so excited to hear from you. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you next time. You're gonna like this one. Hey if you guys enjoyed today's German chocolate cake recipe I would really appreciate it if you would give me a thumbs up, make sure to subscribe, and hit that notification bell. Also if you enjoyed today's recipe video here are two others you might like as well.