from Cupcakes! From the Cake Mix Doctor by Anne Byrn

Ingredients:

1 bar (4 oz.) German’s sweet chocolate

1 package plain German chocolate cake mix

1 package vanilla instant pudding mix

1 cup sour cream

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup vegetable oil

4 large eggs

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Line 24 cupcakes cups with paper liners and set aside.

2. Grate chocolate by breaking bar into pieces and dropping them one at a time through the feed tube of a food processor while it’s running. Or, carefully rub the chocolate bar with a hand-held coarse cheese grater. Set chocolate aside.

3. Place the cake mix, pudding mix, sour cream, water, oil, eggs, and the grated chocolate in a large mixing bowl and blend with an electric mixer on low speed for 30 seconds. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and increase speed to medium, beating batter for 2 minutes more. The batter should look thick and well-combined. Spoon batter into prepared pans, filling the cups 3/4 of the way full. Place pans in the oven.

4. Bake cupcakes until they spring back when lightly pressed with your finger, about 19-22 minutes. Remove pans from oven and cool 5 minutes. Then remove cupcakes from pans and cool on wire racks about another 15 minutes before frosting.

Coconut Pecan Frosting

Ingredients:

1 can (12 oz.) evaporated milk

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

12 tbsp (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter

4 large egg yolks, slightly beaten

1 1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract

1 package (7 oz. 2 1/3 cups) sweetened flaked coconut

1 1/2 cups chopped pecans

1. Place the evaporated milk, sugar, butter, egg yolks and vanilla in a large saucepan over medium heat. Cook, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until thickened and golden brown in color, 10-12 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in coconut and pecans. Cool the frosting to room temperature before spreading. About 20 minutes.

Allllllllright. So, grating chocolate is the biggest pain in the ass ever, I hate it. I was SO furious trying to watch Wife Swap and make this big huge mess in my kitchen at the same time. But, once I saw the flakes mixed into the batter I understood why they were there. That is going to taste really, really good. Melty little flakes mixed into the subtly sweet German chocolate cupcake. Also,  instead of buying separate cake mix and pudding mix I just got the kind with both in one. That stuff’s always on sale for $1 a box at Jewel so these are really cheap-o cupcakes to make if you’re a fatso like me and you always have things like evaporated milk, butter and sour cream on hand.  You do not get an ass like mine from NOT having a fridge full of dairy products. Anyway, the frosting was really tasty, it’s the only part I’ve tried yet since we’re waiting for the mom-in-law to get here from Flint to sample these. I will say, though, the frosting recipe makes enough to frost 4 dozen cupcakes. If you’re making this into a regular two-layer cake then make that much frosting, otherwise you might want to half it. Unless you just like to eat frosting, which you could do.  Oh, and the book recommends toasting the coconut in your oven before making the frosting, I am lazy and did not do that.

Last Christmas I was “out-to-here” pregnant with my son Teno and I slaved over insanely complicated from-scratch peppermint chocolate cupcakes with Swiss meringue butter cream and no one at the party I took them to gave a crap at all. Then for the next party I made gingerbread and fresh  pear cupcakes from this book and everyone loved them. That day, I learned to never make anything from scratch again if it can be purchased in boxed-form. I worked at a shmancy bakery in Wicker Park for years and we used boxed brownies and cakes and just added this or that to the mix to make it extra yummy. You can’t beat cake mix for consistency and simplicity.

I’ll let you know how these taste but they seem nice and light, almost like a chiffon. German chocolate chiffon, who would have thunk it?