Spoiler Alert: No Hessian Behind that B-day Cake




Recently reading about the nearly 1,200 Hessian soldiers (from the Federal State Hesse in midwest Germany) who were either captured or killed as a result of Washington's famous Delaware River crossing at Trenton, New Jersey, Christmas 1776,

naturally I wanted to know more about the origins of German Chocolate Cake as Jan pulled out an ingredients box last night to make her favorite for her b-day.  I expected to find out some obscure tale of Black Forest peasants smuggling chocolate from Bavaria to make sweet pecan cakes,

but it turns out Germany has nothing to do it.  The cake, instead, is merely named after a 19th century American chocolate maker who invented a type of chocolate with a little more sugar in it than normal.  Samuel German (1802-1888) was born in Devonshire England, but eventually made his way to Dorchester Mass, and came to work for Bakers, the oldest – and for many years previous to Hershey's dominance, the greatest – chocolate company in America.

By 1852 German had perfected "a new chocolate that was called German's Sweet Chocolate.  This recipe, which had a higher content of sugar than Baker's Premium No. 1, was to be 'palatable, nutritious and healthful, and is a great favorite with children.'" Walter Baker bought the recipe for $1,000 yet it wasn't for a century afterward that a new recipe for German Chocolate Cake appeared as the "Recipe of the Day" in the June 3, 1957 edition of the Dallas Morning Star, which would come to call for only 4 oz of the sweet chocolate and an ingredients list for the now famous coconut-pecan frosting.  The closest the recipe comes to Germany is obscure. The old Baker's 1871 trademark picture of La Belle Chocolatiere,

is the reproduction of a pastel painting of a real chocolate server by the famous artist Jean Etienne Liotard, an 18th century Austrian court painter. The painting eventually made it onto the walls of an art museum in Dresden Germany where the head of Baker's saw it on a visit to Europe and decided that was the new company brand.

I think Jan preferred the mystical story of Black Forest peasants.