Gluten Free German Chocolate Cake

I love it when people are not stingy with their recipes. It's my opinion that if you know how to cook something and it is fabulous, you would want as many people as possible to know the joy of eating your food. That's how my friend Aimee is, who, to be honest, is probably a better cook than I am. I know she already has better knives and flour grinders and kitchen stuff than me. But that's beside the point.

The other night I decided to make a German Chocolate Cake after watching that episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay (another person who is not stingy with his recipes) where he makes the unconventional German Chocolate Cake and beats out the lady from Harlem who had a beautiful, traditional, yummy looking cake that she had been making from the same recipe for years. The thought of that yummy, coconut pecan frosting was enough to get me off the couch and into the kitchen. To be honest, I've never made a German Chocolate Cake before, and to be doubly honest its one of those desserts that I basically wrote off thinking I would never eat again anyway, so why bother? As I was struggling with the frosting recipe I had (which called for egg, by the way. A tip: Stir your egg mixtures carefully over heat or you end up with scrambled eggs! Not that I would know that from experience or anything...) Aimee happened to call me on the phone. I told her I was butchering the frosting I was trying to make and she said that she had an old family recipe from her grandma that was simply divine and I should try it. So I pushed aside my full saucepan of ruined frosting and tried her recipe right then and there while she was on the phone. She was soooo right. It was literally one of the best frostings I have ever tasted. And I've tasted lots of them.

Here's how to do it:

1. Melt 6 tablespoons of butter over medium heat in a saucepan.

2. Add 1/2 cup of brown sugar.

3. Add 1/4 cup of evaporated milk.

4. Add 1 tsp of vanilla (Mexican vanilla, if you can afford it)

5. Add one cup of shredded, sweetened coconut and one cup of chopped pecans.

6. Stir together.

7. Spread over a Blue Chip Bakers Chocolate Cake mix cake and put under the broiler for 1-2 minutes until bubbly.

That's it! So simple and easy and so delicious. You could easily use one of those Betty Crocker Gluten Free Chocolate Cake mixes, and I bet it would be just perfect. The Blue Chip Group's cake mix makes a nice reddish brown cake that looks a lot like a traditional German Chocolate Cake. It's also a great frosting to do over brownies. Just make your brownies in a roll pan or baking sheet and then frost with the frosting and slip it right under the broiler. Broiling it makes it sort of congeal together and forms a nice caramelized crust over the top. Serve this at your next party and people will crawl to you just to get a piece. Thanks for being generous with your recipe, Aimee, and kudos to your grandma for coming up with it!

Happy eating!