Dad's Birthday, plus a couple recipes

One of dad's favorite foods is German Chocolate Cake frosting, except, he doesn't eat chocolate. He hasn't eaten chocolate for years, it bothers his stomach. So for his birthday, which we celebrated last weekend, I made him cupcakes that were yellow cake mix and then homemade pecan/coconut frosting--the frosting that traditionally goes on German Chocolate Cake.

I'd never made that frosting from scratch before, so a little bit of a new adventure for me. Here's the recipe I used--note, this is not an original recipe, I pulled it off another website, I didn't not retain which one.

German Chocolate Cake frosting--just the frosting

I just gotta say about this frosting, wow it's good. You could frost an old hiking boot with this stuff and it would taste good. You could make up a batch and carry it around using it as currency it's so good. Seriously, I'm pretty sure if you took maybe 4 of these frosted cupcakes, you could get someone to trade you for a tank of gas, just a suggestion...

3 egg yolks
1 cup evaporated milk
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 cup pecan pieces
1 1/3 cups shredded sweetened coconut

combine the egg yolks, milk and sugar in a sauce pan and cook over low heat. Stir constantly until thickened. Ok, on this step, I swear it never looked thicker to me. I waited until it was boiling even while I was stirring, then let it boil a little while, then decided it was long enough. I kept track, I stirred and cooked it for about 12 minutes straight. I think it's a good thing to cook it longer vs. shorter because I watched it get a little darker which just makes that brown sugar flavor richer.
Then remove from heat and stir in pecans and coconut.

Let cool to room temperature before frosting the also cooled cupcakes.

BTW, for the cupcakes, I just used one yellow cake mix with 1 cup of soy milk and mixed with an electric mixer for 2 minutes, then baked at 350 for 24 minutes. It made 12 cupcakes.