Is German Chocolate Cake Really German?
Here in America, there is a very popular dessert called German Chocolate Cake. Funny thing is, it happens not to be German at all! (What? Nicht Deutcher? Read on...).
German Chocolate cake has an interesting history. A recipe for
"German's Chocolate Cake" first appeared in a Dallas, Texas newspaper in 1957.
That it was sent in by a Dallas homemaker is all we know, according to Patricia Riso,
a spokeswomen for Kraft foods. It used a brand of chocolate bar called "German's"
which had been developed in 1852 by an Englishman named Sam German, for Baker's
Chocolate Company. German's chocolate is similar to a milk chocolate
and sweeter than regular baking chocolate.
The cake was recieved with great enthusiasm, to put it mildly. Soon, requests about where to find this "German's chocolate bar" were pouring into General Foods (who owned Baker's Chocolate). The company responded by sending copies of the recipe, along with photos of the cake, to newspapers across the country. And everywhere the recipe was published, food editors were swamped with requests for information on where to buy the chocolate. In one year, sales jumped 73 percent. Readers who missed the recipe asked that it be reprinted.
Today, the cake is a regular item in bakeries across the country (including here at Simply Fine Desserts). The cake probably wasn't first created by that Dallas housewife; buttermilk chocolate cakes have been popular in the south for over 70 years, and the Pecans used to make the nice frosting are plentiful in that part of the country.
In most recipes and products today, the apostrophe and the "s" have been dropped, fueling the assumption that the cake's origins are German. So entrenched is this notion that even in Texas, the "Lone Star Legacy II" cookbook (by Austin Junior Forum) has a recipe for "Bavarian Chocolate Pie", an oblique reference to the popular cake's assumed lineage.
The key ingredients for this very American creation: sweek baking chocolate, coconut and pecans.