- Today we're making one of my all time favorite cakes,
German chocolate cake,
named after Samuel German, not the country.
It is the most tender, amazing like delicate chocolate cake,
it just melts in your mouth,
but it's sandwiched between these insanely delicious layers
of like a caramel toasted pecan coconut frosting
that is just beyond the beyond.
Let's get started.
First off, we're gonna prep our pans.
This is a very tender, delicate, delicious cake,
but it can fall apart when it's plopping out
especially since it's a big eight inch pan.
You are gonna wanna use a round of parchment paper
and just make your own.
Put that pan down, trace around,
fold your paper in half,
and you're gonna cut just inside of your line.
One you don't want pencil that you're eating,
and two it's gonna fit comfortably
inside the pan with no wrinkling.
There we go, it does not have to be perfect,
no one's gonna notice
it's really just gonna keep your cake together
when it plops out of the pan.
You can use butter and flour
or today you can take a shortcut and use baking spray.
This stuff is hilarious by the way,
it's like a generic brand I think
but it's pure oil in here and it says,
zero fat, zero calories, blah blah blah,
because the serving size is a third of a second burst.
This is the serving size.
Actually, that was like half a second.
So, be careful when you read labels,
like my little hint for you today.
All right, spray the inside of the pan,
especially the sides,
put that parchment paper on there,
press down, a little bit more spray.
Just repeat that process until you're all done.
If you're buttering and flouring your pans,
really just flour the sides really well,
a little bit of butter to hold parchment paper down
and then some more butter on top.
(upbeat music)
(coughing)
It's like coal miner's lung but with baking spray.
Okay, there we go.
Those are all ready.
And now we can make that batter.
First off, we're gonna get that dry ingredient combo
into our large bowl.
For the dry ingredients
I'm starting off with 2 1/4 cups of all purpose flour
and that is a about 270 grams
if you're measuring up like I am.
200 and.
yeah 270 grams.
1/2 teaspoon of salt,
one teaspoon of baking soda,
1/4 teaspoon of baking powder, in you go,
and I'm adding in one tablespoon of cocoa powder.
This is optional,
I like a little bit more chocolate in my cake
but a German chocolate cake
is actually a very light chocolate
almost like a red velvet cake, very light chocolate
from that sweet Baker's German chocolate.
All right, one tablespoon in you go.
Sift it up.
Oh, those lumps,
but okay.
Now whisk it up.
Once everything is combined,
set it aside and it's on to the chocolate.
(upbeat music)
Nearly all the chocolate flavor from this cake
is coming from German's sweet chocolate.
Not sponsored but a German chocolate cake
is literally just a chocolate cake made I think in the 1800s
to promote this type of chocolate
from Baker's chocolate company made by Samuel German.
So that's why it's called a German chocolate cake.
I actually get a lot of comments from people saying,
this isn't a German cake,
why are you calling it German chocolate cake,
there's no such thing,
but the guy's name was German, there you go.
Four ounces, we're gonna chop it up really finely
because I'm gonna melt it
with some nice hot coffee, half a cup.
Chop, chop, chop, chop.
This chocolate is really delicious by the way,
I've been nibbling on it.
It's like a sweet dark chocolate, really nice.
(upbeat music)
Okay, once your chocolate is all chopped up,
plop it into like a medium bowl carefully,
this is a little awkward.
And now half a cup of a hot, hot coffee.
The goal is to not have to use
a double boiler or the microwave
and then pour that on top,
clean the counter up and set it aside.
After it's sat for like maybe 30 seconds or so
we can whisk it up, see what's gonna happen.
This chocolate actually
has like a little bit of a coconut flavor,
I don't know if it's just me conditioned
to like expect that frosting but it's really interesting,
it's a nice flavor.
I'm surprised
because it's not like a fancy European chocolate company,
it's like Baker's chocolate that you get in the supermarket.
Okay, that's nice.
Couple lumps are leftover, they're gonna melt
and if they don't, I could pop this in the microwave
for 30 seconds and then it'll fix everything.
But for now, we can set this aside
and get on to the other parts of the batter.
I'm adding 1 1/4 cups of unsalted room temperature butter
into my stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment.
We're gonna cream it up and then add our sugar in
so let's get it nice and creamy first.
(upbeat music)
(mixer whirring)
That butter looks great to me.
So I have two cups of sugar here
but I'm reserving one 1/4 of a cup for later.
So, separate that out and let's drizzle the sugar in
until we have a nice fluffy mixture.
(upbeat music)
This looks nice, light and fluffy to me,
let's scrape it down and then move on to the next step.
So what I'm gonna do is separate my eggs on the fly.
This will be for the whites.
The yolks will go straight in there
one at a time while the mixer is running
and we're gonna do it gracefully
and nothing wrong is gonna happen here,
There will be no yolks and my whites,
no shells either, hello.
Already had a broken yoke, this isn't voting well, boo.
(mixer whirring)
Egg number two,
in you go.
Number three.
Four.
I'm gonna add 1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla in right now,
it's about 1/2 a tablespoon.
Scrape that bowl down, this looks delicious to me.
Just checking back with my chocolate ganache mixture
it's a very thin ganache,
looks like everything melted together.
It smells, it smells so good, my gosh.
What is this magical chocolate?
I'm gonna pour this in while the mixer is running and.
(mixer whirring)
Well.
All right, let me scrape the top down since that was crazy.
I knew I shouldn't have done that
but I put it at high anyways.
That's called self sabotage.
Now, we can get that, you can see
there's a lot of unmixed stuff you're hanging around.
Okay, now let's give it one more mix
just to make sure everything's all together
and then we'll start adding our dry mixture in as well.
(mixer whirring)
All right, so this is one of those situations
where you're gonna add in
a little bit of the dry a little bit of the wet,
a little bit of the dry, a little bit of the wet,
rest of the dry and you're done.
So, mix it back and forth,
roughly in thirds I guess, thirds and halves on low.
(mixer whirring)
Don't spill.
One cup of buttermilk by the way.
A little bit more flour,
the rest of the buttermilk.
Me, don't spill, buttermilk, spills.
All right, last bit of flour, in you go.
Use your spatula and just you know,
see what's happening inside of that bowl.
There's gonna be some flour up on top,
maybe some unmixed parts on the bottom,
but don't worry about it
because right now it's time do to those egg whites.
Into a clean bowl with a clean whisk
we're gonna add those egg whites now, in you go.
Whisk it up slowly
then increase the speed as they get frothy.
(mixer whirring)
All right, and as those eggs froth up,
we can drizzle our quarter cup of reserved sugar in.
(upbeat music)
And we're gonna take this to the soft peak stage.
All right, let's take a look.
Whoa, very nice.
That is a very perky peak but I'm still calling it soft.
(upbeat music)
Almost done.
Now it's time to take
some of this beautiful fluffy egg white mixture,
I'm gonna take maybe a cup of it,
and just mix it in really fast to lighten this batter a bit
and then we're gonna fold the rest in.
This batter is so dreamy,
oh my gosh, I would eat this raw.
And by would I mean I have several times.
Okay, that's good.
Now, take all those egg whites out.
And it's time to fold.
When we fold, go down,
through the bottom, and then cut into the middle.
So down, into the middle, down, cut into the middle.
You can move the bowl around a bit,
but the idea is you're not crushing all
those little egg white bubbles.
Many of them are getting crushed,
but, you know, like those baby sea turtles,
some of them are gonna make it.
(upbeat music)
Okay, and after a little bit of careful folding,
we end up with this, this like amazing
light, fluffy chocolate batter, it is so heavenly.
There we go.
I am fully satisfied with the consistency of this batter
and now it is gonna be time to divide it evenly.
I will be using a scale though
because it's hard to tell with this batter,
it's not really liquidy
so to be a mound, you have to shake it around, so.
So I think it's probably gonna be about
maybe 400 and change grams each.
Let's see, that's 450
♪ Baby ♪
Okay more, it's more than 450,
probably about 500.
♪ Baby baby baby ♪
Okay, yeah it's about 500 and change per pan.
If you're measuring it out
just make sure you zero out your scale
before you put the batter in but after the pan's on.
So you can see all I'm going to do
is just kind of tap it around a bit
just so it spreads out a little bit
before I put it into the oven.
It's not the end of the world though, it'll self level.
I'm adding some baking strips on
to get a nice flat cake layer.
If you wanna learn more about baking strips,
click over there for my how to get flat cake layers video,
it is my most popular video ever
because people love flat cakes for stacking,
so much easier when they're not domed.
Although it cuts down on the snacking
for all those all those cake dams you're gonna cut off.
All right, into the oven, 350 for about half an hour.
You might wanna try moving the pans around
if your oven has a hot spot,
but try and let them sit in the oven without disturbing them
because this is like a souffle like consistency
this taste like chocolate mousse raw, so good,
right into the oven.
Let's make this happen.
Into like a medium saucepan,
I'm adding in 1 1/4 cups of packed light brown sugar.
I have a quarter teaspoon of salt,
you could be a little generous
if you want to add a bit more.
1 1/2 sticks of unsalted butter at room temperature.
Why unsalted butter?
Because different butter makers
have different amounts of salt in their salted butter
so we wanna control the salt, in you go.
One can of evaporated milk
and that is 12 fluid ounces or 354 milliliters.
All right, and then the last thing is three egg yolks.
So, reserve those whites, use them for something later.
You can make a healthy egg white omelet
which is disgusting to atone for your sins
after eating all this cake.
(upbeat music)
Two yolks,
and three yolks, there we go.
Wash your hands.
I'm gonna mix this up a bit,
I'm gonna use a French whisk for this.
French whisks are narrower
and not as bulbous as a regular balloon whisk.
That's nice because it can get the corners of your pot
and nothing's gonna get burnt in there,
everything will be whipped up.
Mix it up a little bit then put it on heat
and don't forget that splash of vanilla.
It's one teaspoon.
That's a teaspoon.
All right, onto the heat.
I have set this clumpy, lumpy mixture over medium heat.
Go ahead and just start stirring it
that butter will melt up,
everything's gonna be okay
and this is gonna smell so amazing,
it's gonna be like a candy facial.
Okay, by the by you could have used melted butter in here
and it would have been so easy.
And why didn't I think of this?
I'm changing on the recipe card, use melted butter.
There we go.
It's melting up, just stir it continuously.
In about five minutes
you're gonna have a very thick mixture coming to a boil.
Give those pecans a rough chop,
they don't need to be fine, you can have big pieces.
It's all about that texture.
All right, I think we're done
so I'm gonna take it off the heat
and add this other ingredients in.
Transfer this into a bowl so it cools down a bit faster,
this copper pot is very hot.
Right now I'm gonna add my toasted pecans in there.
What, so fragrant and last but not least
this sweetened shredded coconut, it's Angel Flake coconut,
and my mum used to keep this in the freezer
and my brother and I
would sneak a handful every day in the afternoon,
we'd like take a little bit until there was none left.
And my mum would be like,
I'm making a German chocolate cake, where's all my coconut?
It's in our bellies.
All right, now just mix it up to combine everything
and try not to snack too much, it's still pretty hot.
This stuff, this stuff is the business.
That is so good.
If you haven't had German chocolate cake,
where have you been?
Where have you been?
Eat this, make it, eat it.
Set this aside until it is cool enough
to spread onto your cooled cake layers
that are still in the oven,
and you'll have a delicious amazing treat.
This cake is so tender
but there's a trade off, it's delicate.
And as that cake cools down,
all those air bubbles will shrink a little bit
as the air condenses, less kinetic energy,
blah, blah, blah, things you don't care about,
and you know it's gonna collapse a little bit
but it is still the most amazing cake.
It's not all chemicals,
there's a lot of you know from sodium bicarbonate,
there is a lot of those egg whites having fluffed it up
so a little shrinkage is okay, don't worry about it.
I'm gonna gently invert it onto a wire cooling rack.
All these things I don't normally do, okay.
And here we go.
And then just take the parchment off immediately
because it's changing the rate
at which the bottom shrinks down but that's very nice, look.
This cake, this cake I tell you.
(soft music)
Lift it up,
get that parchment paper off quickly
because it's gonna change the rate
at which the bottom shrinks
and you don't want your cake layers
to be all you know,
trapezoidal with our cross section,
you want nice cylindrical prisms.
Let these cool completely before you assemble,
trust me the wait will be worth it.
This cake is gonna be so fun to assemble.
All I have to do is get an ice cream scooper
and scoop on a thick layer of that insane frosting.
Scoop it on or just like plop it on with a spoon
if you don't have an ice cream scooper
and then give it a quick smooth,
don't be too careful about it though.
Add on the next layer, repeat the process
and then add a final giant as thick as possible
layer of the frosting on top.
You can give it a nice, like a gentle smooth,
don't try and make it look too perfect
because this is a rustic looking delicious cake.
So just smooth it out a little bit
and then it's ready to eat.
You can store this at room temperature
if it's like covered under a cake dome overnight
or refrigerate it,
bring it back to room temperature
and eat the entire thing.
I am so ready for this piece.
I love this cake.
Just let me get this over with,
you have to make this recipe.
If you're wondering,
well, what kind of cake should I make today?
The answer is a German chocolate cake
and this is worth all the time.
It's also like the only cake recipe where it's a layer cake
and I'm not not gonna decorate it.
Just slather that icing on,
don't try and make it look all fancy,
it is what it is and it's delicious.
Okay, let's take a bite.
Get all that frosting.
Like joy, joy, happiness, endorphins.
That frosting is intoxicating,
even if you hate coconut, you're gonna like this,
I just promise you.
Okay, I'm not gonna ramble
I'm gonna finish this off camera
but thanks so much for watching,
I hope you get a chance to make this recipe.
Any questions, leave them in the comments below.
You can always get the full recipe
on preppykitchen.com
and you can follow me on Instagram @preppykitchen.
And finally, don't forget to hit that like button
and subscribe, bon appetit.