For my birthday this year, I decided to bake my own cake. Not because I couldn’t find a friend to make one or buy one for me, but because I am the only person I know who enjoys German Chocolate Cake and I wanted to teach myself how to make one instead of forcing my friends and family to bake or buy something they wouldn’t even enjoy. As I close out a year of personal growth, it felt fitting to finish it off by learning something new as the ultimate gift to myself.
My cake was ‘rustic’ at best, not nearly as beautiful as the photo from Salt and Baker above but it was damn delicious and I wanted to share the frosting recipe here because, let’s be real, I couldn’t be bothered to make the actual cake from scratch since everyone knows the most important part of German Chocolate Cake is the frosting.
I based it off of this recipe from Food and Wine, but modified to make about half as much because that seemed like a whole lot of frosting for one cake and since I’m eating it by myself, I didn’t want to know I was consuming two entire sticks of butter in a week. 🙂
German Chocolate Cake Frosting
Ingredients:
- 1 stick of butter
- 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
- 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk
- 3 egg yolks
- 2 cups sweetened shredded coconut
- 2 1/2 cups pecan halves, toasted for 8-10 minutes in the oven and chopped
- 3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
- pinch of salt
Directions:
- Combine butter, brown sugar and condensed milk in a saucepan and cook over low to medium heat until the butter melts, stirring constantly. Add the egg yolks and whisk constantly until the sauce thickens. This will take about 10 minutes and, yes, your arm will feel like its about to fall off. No, you can’t avoid this step or your frosting will be glumpy and gross.
- Pour sauce into a mixing bowl. Add remaining ingredients and stir to combine. Let cool and ice over your favorite chocolate boxed cake. I recommend Ghirardelli. 🙂
Do you ever make your own birthday cake? I highly recommend it. In fact, I’m going to go have a slice now….
Image via.
No Comments