German Chocolate Cupcakes

My Dad loves German Chocolate Cake.  He only gets it once a year for his birthday so for Father's Day I made him German Chocolate cupcakes with Chocolate Ganache filling and the traditional Coconut-Pecan frosting.

The first thing I did was start with the filling because it has to cool.  I chopped up 4 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate.  (1/2 cup.)

Then I heated 1 cup (8 ounces, so a 1:2 ratio of chocolate to cream) of heavy whipping cream and poured it over the chocolate.  Then I stirred until smooth and put it in the refridgerator to cool.

Next I made the Coconut-Pecan Frosting.  In a sauce pan on medium heat stir together egg yolks, butter, sugar, and evaporated milk for 12 minutes-ish until thick like caramel.

Coconut-Pecan Frosting

1 cup sugar

1 cup evaporated milk

1/2 cup butter

3 egg yolks

1 tsp vanilla

1 and 1/3 cup coconut flakes

1 cup chopped pecans

Add coconut and chopped pecans and stir together until evenly coated.  Set aside to cool

Now for the cake.

German Chocolate Cake
1/2 cup boiling water
1 bar (4 ounces) German Sweet Cooking Chocolate
2 cups sugar
1 cup butter
4 egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla
2 and 1/2 cup cake flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk
4 egg whites stiffly beaten

Chop up more chocolate.

Add the 1/2 cup boiling water to the chopped chocolate in a separate bowl so it melts.  Stir until smooth and set aside to cool.



Separate the eggs and whip together the four egg whites with a dash of salt until stiff.  Set aside.

Cream together butter and sugar.

Add the four egg yolks one at a time and mix in.  Add vanilla, then the melted chocolate.

Alternate adding flour, baking soda, salt mixture with 1 cup of buttermilk and mix.



At the very end fold in the egg whites to make the cake batter nice and fluffy.

Scoop batter into cupcake wrappers and bake.  I baked them at 325 degrees for 15 minutes.  This recipe made 40 cupcakes.

When the chocolate ganache (1:2 Chocolate:Cream mixture) is cool, whip it.

Fill cupcakes with chocolate ganache.  Cut holes out in the center and fill with chocolate cream.  This is best done with a pipping bag and large round tip.

Spoon on the coconut pecan frosting.

Why pirate flags you ask?  Because they are fun and I had them.

I ended up making 40 cupcakes, but only enough ganache to fill an even dozen.  Then only enough coconut pecan to frost 24 cupcakes.  What did I do with the rest?

I put some fudge chocolate frosting on them with the rest of the pirate flags and gave them to my friends with kids.