One of the first celebrations I attended in the US was a birthday party hosted by my then boy-friend’s cousin. Excitedly, she said that the birthday cake was German Chocolate Cake. I was a little confused because I wasn’t aware that chocolate cake from Germany was anything special. But then again, Germans do make good chocolate (as opposed to … say the U.S. … no offense) so maybe that’s why it was called “German Chocolate Cake”.
You can imagine my surprise when I saw coconut pecan frosting on the cake. Now it was the Americans’ turn to be surprised. “You don’t have coconut frosting on your chocolate cake?”, they asked. “I’m sorry, no. I have never had chocolate cake with coconut”, I said. “This is new to me. But it’s really good.”
Then why is this often layered chocolate cake topped and filled with coconut or coconut pecan frosting called “German Chocolate Cake” if it’s not even German?
Is it a marketing strategy that also made the “German” Christmas pickle ornament popular? Which, by the way, is neither German in origin nor a German tradition.
The answer is simpler and pretty straightforward.
In 1852, the American (or English) Samuel German developed a dark baking chocolate for the company Baker’s Chocolate. This baking chocolate was produced and sold under the name “Baker’s German’s Sweet Chocolate“.
Then on June 3rd, 1957 a recipe for a chocolate cake was printed in The Dallas Morning News. It had been submitted by Mrs George Clay (who apparently lost her first name when she got married), a homemaker from Dallas, to Julie Bennell’s column “Recipe of the Day”. She called the cake “German’s Chocolate Cake” since it used the Baker’s brand chocolate invented 105 years earlier by chocolate maker Samuel German.
General Foods who owned Baker’s in 1957 took notice of the recipe and distributed it to other newspapers. Sales for Baker’s German’s Chocolate increased by as much as 70%. Over time the possessive apostrophe-s was dropped turning the name into “German Chocolate Cake“.
Considering the name, it is not surprising that most people think that the chocolate cake with coconut pecan layers would be German. Even Lyndon B. Johnson supposedly had German chocolate cake prepared for German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard when he visited him in 1963 on his Texas ranch. We don’t know if Erhard liked the cake. I couldn’t find anything about Johnson’s dessert choice in German sources. There also isn’t a German wikipedia entry for German Chocolate Cake.
There are many recipes and variations of German Chocolate Cake out there, and I have to admit I have never made one from scratch. I am linking a recipe here that has many good reviews but that I haven’t tried making. So, use at your own risk or send me your favorite German Chocolate Cake recipe.
By the way, January 27 is “Chocolate Cake Day“, but it is June 11 that is “German Chocolate Cake Day“.
