There is something to be said for making someone’s eyes roll to the back of their head as they bite into something you have lovingly crafted. The closed eyes and quickened breath revealing the joy they are experiencing so publicly.

It makes the hours spent in front of the hot stove in our record breaking heat wave worthwhile to witness that kind of ecstasy.

It’s birthday month again at my office. It’s been one full year since I started baking cakes for my colleagues, wanting to make their birthdays a little more special with a homemade treat made just for them. I work in a large office and had limited it the folks in my group. However, word is getting out and it’s hard to have enough cake for the people who want to partake. I may need to move this to once per month and make a couple of larger cakes to satisfy more people and include more birthdays. The downside is that it makes it a little less special to not have a cake made special for you, but the positive is that I won’t exclude anyone, either.

This cake was mainly for my colleague Steve. However another Steve shares his birthday and one of our student employees has a birthday this week, too. So this German Chocolate Cake hybrid is for the three of them.

I took Ina Garten’s lovely chocolate cake that has become my gold standard and Cooks Illustrated’s topping for German Chocolate Cakeand combined them in a decadent, succulent cake that pleased all, even coconut haters. The cake is delicate, so splitting the layers was a bit of a challenge. I experimented using a flexible cutting mat to slip the cut layer onto. This worked very well and I’ll use that again.

I was even able to shave off a small slice for Dave. Poor thing had to suffer me heating up the house, he deserves a little sugar.