Happy Belated Birthday, Mom!
Since my mom and I spend most of the year two thousand miles apart, she experiences most of my baking through photographs. And that’s no way to experience chocolate tarts and berry cobblers and Oreo-stuffed chocolate chip cookies! Our summer travels put us in St. Louis a couple weeks after my mom’s birthday, so I decided to fix that and went back to the Epicurious Top 15 lists to find a chocolate-y dessert.
The Inside Out German Chocolate Cake is not a summer recipe. This cake requires multiple hours of oven use, at three different temperatures. By the end, you’ll be using the stove top, too, and the poor A/C will be having a fit. But sometimes a frozen, fruity dessert just won’t do! There’s really no comparison between a store-bought tub of German chocolate frosting and the rich, gooey filling you get from caramelizing sweetened condensed milk in a water bath for an hour and a half. I wish I’d made extra to save and eat with a spoon.
I also wish I’d undercooked the cake layers a bit, because at 20 minutes they seemed a bit dry. A cake mix (gasp!) would be a fine substitution. One thing I loved about this recipe was the frosting method — instead of having the baker pour oodles of liquid-y ganache over the cake until coated, it first suggests coating the cake in chilled ganache. This solid frosting acts as a nice base for the remaining ganache to drip over. The finished product is a lovely, shiny chocolate cake — yum!
Oh, and don’t forget to serve this one with milk or ice cream!
Jennifer, have you ever tried Bannofee pie? It is fantastic for a non-chocolate dessert. The reason I mention it is that the main ingredient is caramelized sweetened condensed milk. I have a recipe if you are interested. It’s basically caramel, bananas and whipped cream.
Christine,
I’ve never heard of that — sounds delicious! I’d love the recipe!!
Jennifer, this looks and sounds delicious! It’s left me thinking “How can I get Jennifer to bake something for me?”. Thanks for sharing this lovely recipe and the Epicurious Top 15 lists, which I’ve never seen before!
This was a very delicious cake! Thank you so much Jennifer and Greg for one of the best homemade birthday cakes ever!!