It is my brother in law and mother in law's birthday on Friday. What better reason to drive home to Kansas and hand deliver a delicious cake?!
Honestly, I've never had much luck with white/yellow cake recipes. For some reason, they always turn out like corn bread. At least they just taste like it to me. It would either be a chocolate cake or a red velvet cake. Since I didn't want to whip out my red food dye I decided to make a chocolate cake.
My usual chocolate cake recipe is...good. It works. It hasn't really failed me in regards to flavor. It's spilled over a few times and sometimes it's not as light as I'd like it to be. All the same, the flavor is mild chocolate and not overpowering. Usually when you buy a cake from the grocery it will be so chocolatey that your tastebuds will be choco-burned the next morning and you couldn't bring yourself to eat a teaspoon of sugar even if your life depended upon it. I pride myself on my mild chocolate cake! YUM!
Since I left my recipe books at the restaurant I decided to find another chocolate cake recipe. I have bookmarked over 60 recipes for sweets and desserts here on my computer. I figured I could find a good chocolate cake recipe in there somewhere!
Like a flash of lightning from the heavens above---"Moist Devil's Food Cake" lit up in my gaze. I was dumbfounded as I looked at the picture of a sample cake using this recipe. Three layers of rich and moist chocolate cake between shiny chocolate ganache! Oh boy howdy--the angels sang.
The joyous melody of the heavenly beings came to a screeching halt. "Where are my mixers?" I asked myself out loud. Instantly, I remembered. I left those at work as well. What's a woman to do but go old...old...fashioned and mix everything by hand?
I jotted down the recipe and assembled my ingredients along with a heavy duty bamboo spoon, a whisk, and a spatula.
Moist Devil's Food Cake
(Adapted from Martha Stewart Living, 2006)
1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter, softened (plus a bit more for the pans)
2 1/4 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 tbsp vanilla
1/2 cup boiling water
3/4 cup cocoa (plus a bit more for the pans)
1 cup whole milk
3 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
*note* I mixed all of this by hand. The cake came out like a dream. I'd recommend giving your mixers a break for once!
Whisk your butter until it is creamy and smooth.
Add the sugar and stir/whisk until fully incorporated.
Dump the sugar into the mix and enjoy the aroma.
Break the 4 eggs into the sugar/butter mixture and stir until it is all incorporated.
With the boiling water in a large bowl, slowly add the cocoa and milk alternately and stir (not whisk--the chocolate will get caught in the whisking hooks) constantly. It will become very thick and hard to stir if you wait to add the milk until you've mixed the chocolate and water. When it looks like it is starting to thicken up nicely you can whisk. Set aside.
I used Hershey's Dark Chocolate Cocoa. AMAZING taste.
The aftermath of the cocoa/milk fiasco--lesson learned. Add the cocoa and milk to the boiling water together to avoid clumpage.
Sift the flour, soda, and salt into a bowl.
See all the clumps? Sifting the flour mix will eliminate those clumps and make a smooth batter.
Pour the flour and cocoa mixtures into the butter mix, alternating between the flour mixture and the cocoa milk mixture. Stir with your long spoon in figure eight or circular motions towards your body and away from.
The first addition of flour and cocoa/milk
More flour, please!
The last addition of cocoa/milk--look how dark the cocoa is!
Grease your pans with butter and sprinkle cocoa inside the pans. Shake pans to coat with cocoa well. The batter will not be runny, but thick. Use a spatula to spoon batter into pans and smooth even.
(I used four 7 inch aluminum pans and had no batter left over. You could use three 8 inch pans or even two 9 inch pans I'm sure. I'm not a fan of using those long rectangular pans--but if you want to, go for it!)
Bake at 350 until a toothpick comes out of the center clean. My 7 inch pans took about 25-35 minutes.
Enjoy!
GREAT chocolate cake. I'd make it again!
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