German Chocolate Cake
With Coconut-Pecan Cajeta Frosting      

This is a Bobby Flay recipe!!  Our son, Blair, is a German Chocolate Cake lover. When I asked him what flavor cake he'd like for his 27th birthday (a tradition in our home), he graciously replied 'German Chocolate'. No surprise there! 

That request always meant a Betty Crocker or Duncan Hines box mix with ready made icing. But this year, mom's a baking fiend! When I found this recipe I noticed the recipe level was marked as 'difficult'. I guess I've never really understood the differentiation between 'easy' recipes and 'difficult', other than one has more ingredients perhaps than the other?  Time consuming perhaps, but 'difficult' is not the term I'd use. I was unfamiliar with Muscavado sugar before this cake and had to go to a couple of stores to find coconut milk. Muscavado is the only 'brown' sugar I use now. It comes from the island of Mauritius, off the lower eastern coast of Africa. Muscavado sugar is different from the brown sugar I'm used to cooking with due to the fact it retains much more of the molasses flavor that gets lost in the processing of our local brown sugar. I didn't use the coconut rum, which is optional, but I can't say that the cake suffered in the least from the absence of the rum.

Follow the cake recipe exactly and plan on spending at least 4 1/2 to 5 hrs in the process.

This is our son, Blair and niece, Ashton. Her birthday is the week after Blair's so we celebrated them together!

If you love chocolate, this cake is so worth the time it takes to make. I have to admit, it didn't taste at all like the German Chocolate my family was used to getting from a box mix. What it DID taste like, was the most incredibly decadant 'Death By Chocolate' cake I've ever tasted.
To get the recipe, click on this link: http://bit.ly/gCrpU9

NOTES:
1.)  The sauce is VERY liquidy in this recipe. I kept expecting it to thicken to consistency of gooey caramel...it doesn't. I stirred it for an hour, then allowed it to cool completely. It never got to the thick caramel-like texture I wanted. I ended up saturating the cake with the liquid mixture, which as you can from the photo didn't seem to have an effect on the looks of the cake. Though the cake tasted stupendous the next day, it had to sit overnight to soak up the milky consistency of THIS cajeta.  I posted a more authentic recipe for 'Cajeta' that I found at the end of this article and will be using next time I make this cake. If you can't find goat's milk, use whole fat milk. Goat's milk lends to richer flavor and is preferred.

2.)  Make it the day before and refrigerate overnight. Take it out a couple of hours before you're ready to serve it. It will make all the difference in the world on texture and taste. Hands down, the 2nd day was better!

 I truly love that my 'kids' indulge me and let me bake birthday cakes!  Birthday's are one of my favorite days to celebrate. Simply because that is the ONE day that belongs to the birthday person. What better way to celebrate one's life then with a birthday cake?







Here's the CAJETA recipe that I'll use next go round, I recommend reading through the recipe before beginning. This recipe makes more than you need for the one cake, but the candy is so good, you can store it in a jar in the frig and use on ice cream too!
FOR THE CAKE: DON'T FORGET YOU'LL NEED THE COCONUT AND PECANS!
I would recommend using the amounts in Bobby Flay's recipe and adjust the amount of cajeta to your taste. 
I also recommend having a stool to sit on and either a good book or a tv...90 min. is a long time to stand with nothing to do but stir :o)

Cajeta

2 quarts of goat’s milk
2 cups of sugar
1 cinnamon stick
1 vanilla bean or 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract
1 teaspoon of baking soda

Method:
1. Stir together the milk and sugar in a large pot (make sure the liquid only goes half-way up the sides as it’s going to get frothy at one point and you don’t want it boiling over) and add the cinnamon and vanilla (if using a bean, split it lengthwise, scrape the seeds into the liquid and add the pod as well). Bring to a boil on medium heat while constantly stirring. This will take about 15 minutes.
2. When milk boils, remove from heat and add baking soda (dissolved in a bit of water) to the pot. The mixture will rise and get frothy, but as long as you keep stirring it will be fine.
3. Place the pot back on the stove on medium heat, and stir and stir and stir (though if you need to take a break, leaving the pot unattended for a minute or so won’t cause any harm to the cajeta). Make sure the milk stays at a gentle simmer rather than a raging boil.
4. After about an hour, the milk should start to turn golden brown. Remove the cinnamon stick and the vanilla pod. At this point, it will start to thicken fast, so it’s important to keep stirring so the milk doesn’t burn on the bottom of the pan.
5. Keep stirring until the mixture is a rich brown and thick enough to coat the back of the spoon, which will happen in about 15 minutes.
6. Pour into a glass container. It should keep in the refrigerator for a week, though mine has never lasted that long.
Notes: You can find goat’s milk at most health-food stores or farmer’s markets. Also, the cajeta gets thicker as it cools, so be sure not to overcook it. If it’s too thick, however, you can thin it by adding hot water.