My mom kept dropping hints about wanting German Chocolate Cake for her birthday so I thought I would make the best German Chocolate Cake she’d ever had! I used Smitten Kitchen’s recipe for the most part but free styled my own “frosting” with dates and subbed out the sugars for coconut sugar. I also used slightly bigger pans so I increased the cake ingredients by half. I don’t have 6 inch pans and I figured probably a lot of people don’t. You’ll probably have leftover date-coconut paste but it’s great for a cheese accoutrement or on banana ice cream! Since the cake was pretty much shades of brown I topped with some berries 🙂
{serves 8}
- 3 oz bittersweet chocolate (I used scharffenberger chunks)
- 1/4 + 1/8 cup hot coffee (I used Lion Coffee)
- 3/4 cup buttermilk
- 3 large eggs, seperated
- Â 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
- 1 1/2 cup coconut sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 3/4 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/4 + 1/8 cocoa powder
- 1 1/8 cup all purpose flour
- 1/4 + 1/8 tsp salt
- 20 medjool dates
- 3/4 cup unsweetened coconut
- 3/4 cups pecans
- 1/2 tsp coconut extract
- sea salt
- berries for garnish (optional)
CAKE:
- heat oven to 350ºF, line the bottoms of two 8 inch cake pans (or somewhere close to that size, I used heart shaped pans) with parchment paper, coat the bottom and sides with butter
- pit dates and soak them in hot water in a big bowl
- in a medium sized bowl whisk together chocolate and hot coffee until the chocolate is all melted. whisk in buttermilk; set aside
- in another medium sized bowl beat egg whites until stiff using (I highly recomend using an electric beater!)
- in a large bowl (use the same beaters, no need to clean them), beat butter, sugars and salt together until fluffy. beat in yolks and vanilla until smooth, then buttermilk/coffee/chocolate mixture
- sprinkle baking soda over and beat well to combine again. scrape down sides, add cocoa powder and flour and beat until just combined
- fold in a quarter of the egg whites to loosen batter. fold in the rest gently until fully combined
- divide between the baking pans, bake for 24-26 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. set out to cool
DATE COCONUT CARAMEL:
- line a small baking sheet and spread coconut and pecans out evenly, bake for 10ish minutes, stirring occasionally until toasty and fragrant, let cool
- chop pecans coarsely
- in a small food processor blend dates, coconut, pecans, coconut extract and a dash of sea salt until paste-like
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