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Devils Food (C granulated sugar C butter)
1½ C granulated sugar 12 C butter 4 egg yolks 3 squares bitter chocolate 5 T boiling water 1/2 C sweet milk 14 C flour (Swansdown) 2 t baking powder 1 t vanilla Cream, butter and sugar. Add egg yolks, then chocolate dissolved in 5 T boiling water. Add milk and flour alternately. Add vanilla and baking powder. Lastly beaten egg-whites. Bake in hot oven (375 degrees.) ½ C milk Icing 12 C butter 2 squares bitter chocolate 2 C sugar Boil until it forms soft ball. Cool before beating. Add cream while beating if it is too stiff to spread well.
Mrs. C. Klepper, Mrs. H. E. Gaddis.
A community-cookbook chocolate layer cake with a boiled fudge frosting. The typescript has lost most of its fraction bars, so read the ingredient list with care before starting.
- The garbled fractions"12 C butter" in both the cake and the icing means 1/2 cup; "5 T boiling water" is correct as written. The flour quantity was checked against the printed page and stands as our text now gives it.
- SwansdownSwans Down is a brand of soft-wheat cake flour, still sold. If you substitute all-purpose flour, remove two tablespoons per cup and sift well, or the crumb will be tougher than intended.
- Bitter chocolateUnsweetened baking chocolate, sold then and now in one-ounce squares. Three squares is three ounces for the cake, two ounces for the icing. Do not substitute bittersweet or semisweet bar chocolate without cutting the sugar.
- Sweet milkOrdinary fresh whole milk, specified to distinguish it from the soured or buttermilk that older recipes often called for. No adjustment is needed.
- Order of mixingBaking powder is listed last, after the flour has already gone in. Modern practice is to sift it with the flour so it distributes evenly; the eggs whites still go in last, folded rather than beaten in.
- The egg whitesThey appear only in the method, as "beaten egg-whites," with no quantity given; presumably the whites of the four eggs whose yolks are used. Take them to soft peaks and fold in a third first to loosen the batter, then the rest.
- Oven and pans375F is given and is right for this batter. No pan size or time appears: two 8-inch round layers take about 25 to 30 minutes, a 9x13 about 30 to 35. Test with a skewer.
- The boiled icingThis is a fudge frosting. Soft-ball stage is 235-240F on a thermometer. The instruction to cool before beating is the hinge — beating while hot produces a grainy, brittle icing. Let it drop to about 110F, then beat until it loses gloss and thickens, adding cream if it stiffens past spreading.
- YieldEnough for a two-layer 8-inch cake, roughly twelve servings. The frosting quantity is generous and will cover the sides comfortably.
Devil's food is generally described as the dark counterpart to angel food cake -- pale, white, and made only of whites against a cake dark with chocolate and rich with yolks. Recipes of this type, built on unsweetened baking chocolate dissolved in boiling water, spread widely in the early twentieth century. The recipe is credited to two contributors, Mrs. C. Klepper and Mrs. H. E. Gaddis.