German Chocolate Cake and Cupcakes

If you've been following my blog, you'll notice that many of the cakes I make are for my husband's boss at work. He has a major sweet tooth and I sort of set up a deal with him in which I make him cakes and he gives me honest feedback. An inadvertent bonus to this deal is that all of my husband's coworkers get to see and admire my cakes, so I'm slowly but steadily building a reputation.

Anyway, my point is that today's dessert - German Chocolate Cake - is another one of those that went to him. The recipe is for a two-layer cake, but I wasn't ready to do that yet, so I made him a single-layer cake and made a batch of cupcakes for my family to eat.

This is a pretty labor-intensive recipe to follow, though not difficult. I didn't have many problems at all (and anyone who knows me knows that to be a feat). One problem I did have was with the filling. My son was running amok in the kitchen so I wasn't able to stir constantly for the first minute, thus resulting in a few "scrambled egg" bits floating around. I picked them out with a spoon, so it wasn't a problem really, just inconvenient.

I also omitted the rum in the syrup. I wasn't too sure about using just sugar water, but it worked and tasted fine. I don't like having alcohol in our house so when I make this recipe again for my brother-in-law's birthday in December, I'll more than likely omit it then as well, since it's not missed.

German chocolate cake isn't the most beautiful, but it sure is tasty.

 

The chocolate icing was DELICIOUS. I had a really hard time not licking the bowl. You can see my decorating skills haven't come very far, although I liked the little stars in the center. I'm still working on steadying my hand for piped edges.

 



The more icing, the better!

And these were the cupcakes made with the second half of the batter. Since I'd made one one-layer cake and one batch of cupcakes, the cooking time needed to be adjusted and I forgot to account for that, so they were SLIGHTLY dryer than I'd have preferred...but this didn't seem to bother my family, who raved about them. My mom took some to her coworkers and my brother's friends had some as well, and everyone said how awesome they were. I already mentioned how my brother-in-law wants one for his birthday now, too, after only seeing my cake - and my mom wants me to make one for Christmas as well. What have I gotten myself into?