German Chocolate Cupcakes …with Coconut Pecan Icing

This weekend I was in the mood again for chocolate cupcakes, but with something a little different for the icing. I debated on making either rocky road or German chocolate, and in the end the rich and gooey coconut pecan icing won out and I decide German chocolate it was.


I had remembered seeing a good recipe for this in my Cake Mix Doctor's Cupcake book. Among other things, the recipe incorporates shavings from a German chocolate sweet bar in the cake mix. In my opinion, this really is what made the cupcakes especially good. You can see little flecks of the chocolate bar inside the cupcake and it gives it a really nice, sweet flavor. It was worth all of the grating I had to do to get the chocolate bar into shavings!

This recipe uses the traditional coconut pecan icing that you always find on German chocolate cake. In fact, I saw the same recipe for it on the inside of my German chocolate bar wrapper.


I've had the coconut pecan icing out of the can before and this icing just doesn't even compare. It's so rich and really easy to make. I was concerned about how it would turn out, but everything went smoothly. The key is to not even try to use this icing until it's cooled. Otherwise it will just drip off of the cupcakes in clumps... delicious clumps, mind you, but difficult when trying to ice a few dozen cupcakes. I learned after the first couple to just wait a while.

I'm keeping these in the refrigerator. The book said they will last a week in the refrigerator and up to 3 days on the counter. The recipe for both the cupcakes and icing can be found at the link below:

German Chocolate Cupcakes & Coconut Pecan Icing