Ein Cake

It's another busy week.  Mrs Walles has a birthday approaching and we're getting ready for a well-deserved (on her part, at least) break away to Long Island and New York City.  I've just spent the morning creating a birthday cake from a recipe on the inside of a chocolate bar wrapper.  I'm not usually one to make use of the recipes on the side of the box, but as you'll see this one is worth making an exception for. 

It's called a German chocolate cake.  I'd love to be able to make one of those witty remarks about it being neither German, nor chocolate, nor a cake, but I can't as it is undoubtedly chocolate and a cake, and indeed a chocolate cake.  But it isn't a German chocolate cake, as I (and I suspect many, even most Americans) assumed.  It's not a German chocolate cake either, if you see what I mean, inasmuch as it is not made from chocolate from Germany.  What it is made from is German's chocolate, German being the name of an American chocolate maker (and just to be clear, he made German's chocolate, not American chocolate - though it was undoubtedly chocolate from America). It originated in the nineteenth century with a company called Baker's (who confusingly make chocolate, not baked goods - although possibly they made the chocolate for bakers?).  It's not chocolate from Germany, is the point, it's chocolate from America, quite sweet but bitter too.

I've now written chocolate so many times that it's starting to do that thing repeated words do where they suddenly seem like they're spelled wrong.

I had downloaded a recipe for the cake from the web but once I got into the supermarket I found that the original German's chocolate is still for sale and it comes with the recipe (which was sent in by a Texas housewife in the fifties, according to Wikipedia) right in the packet, so I thought why not go straight to the horse's mouth and used that one instead.

The reason I'm going to all this trouble, and risking my ability to ever spell chocolate correctly again, is that Mrs Walles is very partial to the stuff.  Not so much to the cake, mind you (which is where all the chocolate is), but to the frosting, which I've just made.  It includes pecans, coconut, evaporated milk, eggs and lots and lots of butter and sugar and I can attest to its deliciousness.

It's a classic cake in America but I've never had any or even seen one in the flesh, so it was rather interesting to follow the recipe along and see what emerged.  I'm very happy with the result so far.  I just hope Mrs Walles is, too!