Devil's food cake

Devil's food cake is a moist, airy, rich chocolate layer cake. It is considered a counterpart to the white or yellow angel food cake. Because of differing recipes and changing ingredient availability over the course of the twentieth century, it is difficult to precisely qualify what distinguishes Devil's food from the more standard chocolate cake, though it traditionally has more chocolate than a regular chocolate cake, making it darker. The cake is usually paired with a rich chocolate frosting.

Overview

Devil's food cake is commonly a dense, rich chocolate cake, quite different from other chocolate cakes such as the German Chocolate cake. It traditionally uses unsweetened chocolate baking squares in lieu of unsweetened cocoa powder. However, contemporary recipes more often than not use cocoa powder for its convenience over the more traditional chocolate baking squares. Also, because of its reduced amount of cocoa butter, cocoa powder has a more intense chocolate flavor than unsweetened chocolate. Moreover, the addition of coffee is frequently used as a liquid enhance the chocolate flavor. There are some recipes found that use hot, or boiling water as the cake's main liquid, rather than milk. One of the more famous Devil's Food cake recipes was called "The Vassar Devil" which was on the menu of the historic and now closed restaurant "The Treasure Chest." A competing recipe was the Wellesley Fudge Cake that uses a half pound of unsweetened baking chocolate, four ounces for the Devil's Food Cake and Four ounces for the Fudge Frosting. Devil's Food Cake historically is baked as a layer cake. Its antithetical counter part is the Angel Food Cake which is a very light, white cake that uses stiffly beaten egg whites and no dairy. However, the Devils Food cake is most often paired with vanilla, yellow cakes and the two combined may create a marble cake.