German Chocolate Cake is all Texan and NO German

One of my favorite cakes since I was little was German Chocolate Cake. I always assumed, as the name implied, that it was some variation on a German dessert. But living in Germany, I could not find a single German that was familiar with this cake. (of course they probably wouldn't call it German chocolate cake - like when I asked a friend if he got some good chinese food when he was in China - he was like "yeah, but there they just call it "food")
Of course the internet comes to the rescue and settles my confusion - German chocolate cake gets it's name from the type of chocolate bar originally used in the recipe, which was named after Sam German, an Englishman, in the 1800s. But the cake first appears in Texas in 1952 in a newspaper recipe submitted my a Dallas housewife. Score another one for Texas.



By the way, a popular cake in both the US and Germany that IS German is the Schwärzwalder Kirschtorte (Black Forest Chocolate Cake), of which I was recently treated to a large piece homemade by a real German.