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Calumet Devil's Food Cake
2 cups flour 3/4 cup butter (scant) 2 level teaspoons Calumet Baking Powder 2 whole eggs 2 level teaspoons cinnamon 1 cup warm mashed potatoes 1/2 of a nutmeg 2 squares Baker's chocolate 1¾ cups granulated sugar 1/2 cup sweet milk 1 cup nut meats (grated) Cream butter and sugar, add yolks (well beaten), then add mashed potatoes, chocolate and nut meats, stir well; then add alternately milk and dry ingredients, which have been sifted together. Fold in beaten whites of eggs. This cake will keep indefinitely. (See illustration, page 52.) Sift 2 cups flour
A potato-based chocolate cake from a baking-powder promotional book, printed with the ingredient list in two columns — hence the stray "Sift 2 cups flour" at the end. The method is complete but the baking directions are missing entirely, which was normal in a book that assumed a cook knew her own range.
- No pan or oven givenBake in two 9-inch layers or a tube pan at 350F: roughly 30-35 minutes for layers, 55-65 for a tube, until a skewer comes out clean. The batter is heavy and wet, so the center sets slowly; underbaking is the likely failure.
- Squares of chocolateA square of Baker's chocolate is 1 oz unsweetened, so this is 2 oz. Melt and cool it slightly before adding — the recipe does not say to melt it, but grated solid chocolate will not disperse through this batter.
- Sweet milkPlain whole milk. The term distinguished it from sour milk or buttermilk, which called for soda instead of baking powder.
- The potatoes are the pointOne cup of warm mashed potato, presumably plain; the recipe does not specify, though seasoned or buttered potato would be out of place. Mash it thoroughly smooth, since lumps stay lumps in the finished crumb, and use it warm rather than hot so the creamed butter does not melt.
- Grated nut meatsFinely ground rather than chopped — walnuts or pecans, ground to a coarse meal in a food processor with a spoonful of the flour to keep them from pasting.
- Half a nutmegAbout 1 teaspoon freshly grated. Combined with 2 teaspoons cinnamon this is a heavily spiced cake by current standards, and closer to a spice cake than a modern devil's food.
- Scant 3/4 cup butterRead as about 11 tablespoons. "Scant" in these books means just under a level measure, not a trimmed-down substitute.
- Yield and keepingNo yield is given. The claim that it keeps indefinitely reflects the potato starch, which holds moisture; wrapped well it will stay moist for several days, but it is not shelf-stable.
Reliable Recipes was published by the Calumet Baking Powder Company of Chicago to demonstrate its product, which is why the brand name appears in the ingredient list itself. Potato in cake was not a novelty or a wartime economy here — mashed potato had long been used in American and central European baking to add moisture and extend expensive flour, and it turns up in chocolate potato cakes through the 1900s and 1910s. The name devil's food appears in print from around 1900, set against the pale angel food cake, and originally described a rich dark cake rather than any particular formula; note that this version has no soda, so it lacks the reddish tinge that alkali gives natural cocoa. The two-column ingredient layout, with quantities in one file and ingredients in another, is the source of the transcription oddity here.