Happy Mother’s Day everybody!
Today is Mother’s Day in the UK and to celebrate I made my mum a yummy devil’s food cake, complete with fresh whipped cream, chocolate ganache and chocolate truffles! If you’re gonna do chocolate, you may as well go all out! This recipe will be for the devil’s food cake, you can pair it with whatever you like of course (white cloud frosting is an excellent pairing)!
I got this recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction, and I can tell you right now I didn’t change a thing! I adore her blog and all of her recipes (her cookbook is on my wish list on amazon too!), you should definitely check her out.
This recipe calls for a cup of strong, hot coffee. Coffee is one of those things that brings out the flavours in chocolate, you add it to your chocolate cake recipe and instantly you’ve intensified your chocolate goodness! This is actually the first time I’ve added coffee to chocolate cake, which is terrible I know, but I have this crazy aversion to coffee I violently hate it. And although I knew in theory that I wouldn’t be able to taste the coffee, I was convinced I would be able to! Of course, I couldn’t taste it at all in this cake and I’m now cursing myself for being such a baby and not doing this sooner. This cake is so rich and fudgy and just delightful, everything a devil’s food cake should be!
I said above that I didn’t change anything in this recipe and there’s good reason for that. Every single ingredient is perfectly matched with what you want this cake to come out like. The oil makes it lovely and moist, butter would only distract from the deep chocolate flavour. You want to use natural unsweetened cocoa for this cake, do not use dutch processed or the bicarb won’t react with the cocoa and you won’t get that gorgeous reddish tint and that distinctive flavour. And if you take away the buttermilk you won’t get such a moist crumb (Sally said to trust her on that and I did!). Then of course without the coffee that chocolate certainly won’t hit you so hard. All that’s left are your sugar, flour and eggs – you of course need the eggs to be room temperate as is true with pretty much any baking. If, like me, you always forget to take your eggs out of the fridge you can bring them to room temperature by letting them sit in warm to hot water for about 5 minutes.
This cake has a nice quick bake on it too, you definitely don’t want to over bake it and take away any of that moistness (count how many times I’ve said “moist” in this post!). Share the batter between two 9″ sandwich tins and bake for about 25 minutes or until your cake tester comes out clean. My cake is actually a 6″ as I made cupcakes out of it too! You can then fill and ice it with whatever you love with chocolate, my pairings definitely made it all that much richer but I think this cake would be great with milk chocolate frosting as Sally had it or even vanilla, yum!
This one’s for you mum, thanks for being the best mum ever! (and she enjoyed it very much!)
[recipe title=”Devil’s Food Cake”]
Ingredients
- 1 and 3/4 cups plain flour
- 1 and 3/4 cups caster sugar
- 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (not dutch processed)
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 2 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
- 1 tps salt
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 2 large eggs, at room temperature
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 1 cup freshly brewed strong hot coffee
Method
- Preheat oven to 350F/170C. Grease and line two 9″ cake pans
- Sift together the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, bicarb and salt and set aside
- Combine the buttermilk, oil, eggs and vanilla using a stand mixer or hand mixer then gradually add the dry ingredients with the mixer on low. Add the coffee. You will have a very thin, water like batter – don’t worry, it’s supposed to be like that!
- Pour the batter evenly between the tins and bake for approx 25 mins or until your cake tester comes out clean.
- Leave to cool in pan for 5 minutes, then turn out on wire rack and leave to cool completely before filling and frosting
[/recipe]
