Devil's food cake

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Devil's food cake
Devil's Food Cake.jpg
Devil's food cake with vanilla icing
Type Layer cake
Place of origin United States
Main ingredients Flour, sugar, butter or substitute, eggs, cocoa powder or baking chocolate
Variations Red velvet cake
  •   Commons-logo.svg Media: Devil's food cake

Devil's food cake is a rich chocolate layer cake that emerged in the United States at the end of the 19th century. It is characterized by its dark color, high chocolate or cocoa content, and moist texture. It is typically served as a layer cake with either chocolate or white frosting.

Contents

The origin of the name is uncertain, but it may relate to the cake's contrast with angel food cake, a light, airy sponge cake. Devil's food cake recipes evolved throughout the 20th century. By 1913, the cake had achieved widespread popularity. Many commercial products have been based on devil's food cake, including cake mixes and snack cakes like Hostess CupCakes and Drake's Devil Dogs.

Etymology

1894 description of devil's food cake, contrasted with angel's food cake. Devil's cake 1894 (edited).png
1894 description of devil's food cake, contrasted with angel's food cake.

The origin of the name "devil's food cake" is uncertain. [1] The first published recipes for it appear in the late 19th century, with reference to "Devil's cake" appearing as late as 1893, and comparisons between "devil's food" and angel's food cake as late as 1894. [2] [3] According to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, the term likely emerged due to a need to differentiate chocolate-batter cakes from other "chocolate cakes" of the time, which were typically yellow cakes with chocolate frosting. The term may have also been inspired by the culinary use of the word "devilled" to describe rich, dark, or heavily spiced dishes. [4]

Angel food cake, a light, airy sponge cake, had already been popular for several decades; given the dissimilarity between the two, "devil's food" may have been coined in deliberate contrast. The name has inspired humorous comments; one of the first printed recipes declares it to be "Fit for Angels", and another early recipe recommends topping it with divinity frosting. [4]

Description

Sliced into portions Devil's Food cake.jpg
Sliced into portions

Devil's food cake is characterized by its moist texture, dark color, and rich chocolate flavor. It is distinguished from other chocolate cakes by its unusually high proportion of chocolate or cocoa, which produces a bolder, more pronounced chocolate taste. [4] Devil's food cake also often contains additional baking soda, which raises the pH level and makes the cake a deeper and darker mahogany color. [1] [5]

Traditional recipes call for unsweetened baking chocolate or cocoa powder, flour, butter or other fat, eggs, sugar, and acidic ingredients like buttermilk or sour milk. Many recipes incorporate hot water or coffee as an ingredient, which enhances the chocolate's flavor and contributes to the cake's characteristic moist, tender crumb. The combination of baking soda and acidic ingredients leavens the cake. Recipes with a higher proportion of acidic ingredients can produce a reddish tint through reactions with anthocyanins present in the cocoa. Such variations were sometimes labeled "red devil's food cake" in the 1920s and 1930s. [6] [4]

Devil's food cake is usually baked in layers, then frosted. While chocolate frosting is common, the cake is also traditionally paired with white frosting like boiled icing or divinity frosting for visual contrast. [4] [6]

History

Early versions

"Devil's Cake" recipe in Table Talk (1893) Devil's cake 1893 recipe.png
"Devil's Cake" recipe in Table Talk (1893)

Devil's food cake emerged in the United States at the end of the 19th century as chocolate became more widely used in American baking. Improvements in cocoa processing in the late 19th century and the move of cocoa production from the Americas into Asia and Africa made smoother, better-tasting chocolate and industrially-produced cocoa powder widely available in grocery stores, popularizing the use of chocolate in American cuisine. Chocolate cakes from the 19th century were typically yellow cakes with chocolate frosting. The increased availability of chocolate allowed cooks to incorporate more chocolate into the cake batter, creating devil's food cake. [6] [4] [7]

The first recipes under the name "Devil's Food Cake" are generally credited to Sarah Tyson Rorer in her 1902 books The New Dixie Receipt Book and Mrs. Rorer's New Cook Book. [4] Earlier versions under different names however, had existed since at least 1871, when food writer Stella Parks identifies "chocolate jelly cakes" incorporating a paste of chocolate, milk, and sugar boiled to a thick consistency through yellow cake batters. In 1893, a recipe for this cake under the name "Devil's Cake" was published in the nationally-distributed Table Talk magazine. Unlike some earlier recipes, this version used brown sugar and did not give cooks a choice between employing the chocolate, milk, and sugar mixture as a part of the batter or a spread. This cake's was described the following year, when a newspaper mentioned "devil's food" as "black as only his satanic majesty can be" served alongside an "angel food" cake. [2] [3]

An illustration of devil's food cake from the 1928 pamphlet "Famous Recipes for Baker's Chocolate and Breakfast Cocoa." WalterBakerDevilsFoodCake1928.jpg
An illustration of devil's food cake from the 1928 pamphlet "Famous Recipes for Baker's Chocolate and Breakfast Cocoa."

By the beginning of the 20th century, the combination of boiled milk and chocolate had given way in many recipes to cocoa powder and buttercream. [2] Cookbooks often printed recipes for "chocolate cake" and "devil's food cake" side by side; the devil's food cake usually be differentiated by a greater proportion of chocolate. An example of this could be seen in a 1914 commercial baker's manual, which called for three ounces of cocoa for chocolate cake, but ten ounces of cocoa for a devil's food cake of a similar size. [4] Apart from this heightened chocolate content, early 20th century recipes for devil's food cake varied widely. A typical devil's food cake made at this time may include chocolate custard combined with sugar and whipped butter, molasses or brown sugar, and a white, boiled icing, sometimes topped with nuts. None of these, however, were compulsory, and in various publications devil's food cake recipes appeared with one or more of these elements omitted. Some, for instance, were coated in buttercream or fudge. [8]

By 1913, devil's food cake had achieved widespread popularity, appearing in Anna Clair Vangalder's Modern Women of America Cookbook 23 times. [9] One variation around this time, swapping chocolate for cocoa powder and baking the cake into layers with boiled icing was published under the name "Velvet Cocoa Cake", and formed an ancestor of the modern red velvet cake. As ingredients were incorporated into this variation giving it a reddish appearance, by the mid-1920s it had acquired the name "Red Devil". [10]

At the end of the decade, the popularity of devil's food cake brought several commercial applications. Following the success of Duff's Ginger Bread Mix in 1929, P. Duff and Sons of Pittsburgh quickly introduced devil's food among its early cake mix offerings. [11] In 1919, the Taggart Baking Company began selling the first commercially produced cupcakes, made using a devil's food cake recipe. The cupcakes would be marketed under the Hostess brand after 1927, and later evolved into the Hostess CupCake known today. [12] Devil's food was also the inspiration for the Devil Dog, a hot dog shaped, cream-filled snack cake, and a precursor to the whoopie pie. [13]

During the Great Depression, cooks introduced coffee in place of the earlier hot milk, further accentuating chocolate flavour. At the same time, whole eggs were used rather than egg yolks. [14] Recipes were often published in the 1950s, often alongside those for red velvet cakes. [15] By this time, names for red velvet cake had dropped reference to devils, [10] but their proximity in publications and similar recipes generated confusion. Part of the reason so many devil's food cake recipes were being published at this time was due to a widely-believed tale, wherein a woman was charged an exorbitant fee after being granted a request for the devil's food cake recipe at the Waldorf Astoria New York. Incensed Americans hearing the story second hand often understood the story to describe a "friend-of-a-friend", and newspapers and community cookbooks were inundated with recipes for Waldford Astoria red velvet cake. The story persisted in publications into the 1970s, and remained believed in some segments as of the 21st century. [15]

Today, the name "devil's food cake" is synonymous with and used as a name for the broad category of chocolate cakes. Disassociated from earlier versions, modern preparations generally omit butter, considering its inclusion overwhelming of chocolate flavors. Parks describes a typical modern recipe for devil's food cake as a type of chiffon cake, including sugar, oil, and beaten eggs, with a moist and light texture, but without the buttery flavors and softness of early versions. [14]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "Devil's food cake". www.britannica.com.
  2. 1 2 3 Parks 2017, p. 122.
  3. 1 2 Jane, Mary (January 20, 1894). "The girl about town". Frederick News. p. 5.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Porcelli, Lesley (2013). "Devil's Food". In Smith, Andrew F. (ed.). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0-19-973496-2.
  5. ↑ Samuel A. Matz (1 January 1992). Bakery Technology and Engineering. Springer. pp. 344–345. ISBN   978-0-442-30855-1 . Retrieved 15 April 2012.
  6. 1 2 3 "Let Them Eat Chocolate Cake · America's Love Affair with Chocolate · VT Special Collections and University Archives Online". digitalsc.lib.vt.edu.
  7. ↑ Clarence-Smith, William Gervase (2000). Cocoa and Chocolate, 1765-1914. New York: Routledge. p. 48. ISBN   978-1-134-60778-5.
  8. ↑ Lovegren, Sylvia (1995). Fashionable Food: Seven Decades of Food Fads. New York: Macmillan. pp.  26–27. ISBN   978-0-02-575705-9.
  9. ↑ Olver, Lynne. "The Food Timeline: cake history notes". www.foodtimeline.org.
  10. 1 2 Parks 2017, p. 127.
  11. ↑ Shapiro, Laura (2015). "cake mix". The Oxford companion to sugar and sweets. Oxford: Oxford university press. ISBN   9780199313396.
  12. ↑ Carlin, Joseph (2015). "Hostess". The Oxford companion to sugar and sweets. Oxford: Oxford university press. ISBN   9780199313396.
  13. ↑ Oliver, Sandra (2015). "whoopie pie". The Oxford companion to sugar and sweets. Oxford: Oxford university press. ISBN   9780199313396.
  14. 1 2 Parks 2017, p. 122–123.
  15. 1 2 Parks 2017, p. 135.

Sources

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