German chocolate cake was popularized in 1957 by a Texas homemaker known as Mrs. George Clay, who published the recipe “German’s Chocolate Cake” in The Dallas Morning News, naming it after Baker’s German’s Sweet Chocolate. The “German” in the name actually refers to Samuel German, an English‑American baker who created that specific sweet baking chocolate for the Baker’s Chocolate Company in the 1850s, not to the country of Germany.