Birthday time again. I think I’ve mentioned before how a birthday cake, in this house, usually means chocolate! Well, that was the request, but I wanted to try something new. So I went on an internet search for ‘birthday cake’, and came up with a modified Devil’s Food Cake recipe.
This intrigued me. ‘Devil’s Food Cake’ is such an evocative name and not one that I am used to, particularly coming from the UK. I wasn’t really sure what the difference would be, but I was keen to find out. Anyhow, a chocolate cake with buttercream icing would definitely fit the bill. The original recipe called for three different colours of buttercream icing; vanilla (white), chocolate, and strawberry (pink). I decided to stick with two, dark chocolate and white chocolate. Can’t overdo the chocolate in this house.
So, the cake required buttermilk. I’ve come across this before but have failed miserably to ever find such a thing in my local supermarket (if it’s there, I don’t know where to look!), so I’ve tended to shy away from recipes needing this. This time, I really wanted to make the cake, so I thought I’d see if there is a substitute. Well, it turns out that you can make a substitute by adding lemon juice, or white vinegar, to ordinary milk and letting it stand for a while-who knew? I suppose some people must have, but not me! That solved a big problem, anyway.
It also asked for Dutch-process cocoa. I don’t have that, either, and have never seen it in the baking section. It’s maybe a bit sophisticated for rural Nova Scotia. Reading up, it seems that standard cocoa powder (in my case, Fry’s) can be substituted, 1 for 1. It might taste slightly different, apparently, but being used to this type of cocoa, I doubted we would notice.
Finally, it needed dark brown sugar. I knew I had this in the pantry, but when I came to use it, I found it had hardened. I could regenerate it, but not in time for my baking. Instead I substituted some light brown sugar and some yellow sugar (I bought the later by mistake, meaning to replenish my light brown sugar supply!). The resulting cake might not be as dark as it could be, but it seemed to work. Amazingly, I found out later that I could have ‘made’ my own dark brown sugar, by mixing 1 cup of white sugar with two tablespoons of molasses, and mixing well in a food processor or blender. I was learning all sorts of new things with this bake.
The Recipe:
Cake
170 g/ ¾ cup unsalted butter, softened
460 g/ 2 cups packed dark brown sugar*
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 eggs, at room temperature
220 g/ 1 ¾ cups plain (all-purpose) flour
90 g/ ¾ cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder**
1 ¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
360 ml/ 1 ½ cup buttermilk, at room temperature ***
59 ml/ ¼ cup mayonnaise
*I used a mixture of light soft brown sugar and yellow sugar, due to a dark brown sugar disaster.
**I used standard cocoa powder
*** I made my buttermilk by adding 1 tbsp lemon juice to 1 cup of 2% milk and letting it stand for 10 minutes or so. Apparently distilled white vinegar, the same volume, would also work.
Preheat the oven to 350F/325 F convection/180 C/160 C fan/ gas 4. Grease and line 3 x 8 inch cake tins.
Beat the brown sugar, butter and vanilla together for about 5 minutes, until lighter and slightly increased in volume. A stand mixer, if you have one, can be really helpful for this recipe, but be sure to keep the sides of the bowl well scraped down.
Add the eggs, one at a time, making sure each one is incorporated before adding the next.
Sift all of the dry ingredients into a separate bowl. Whisk to mix well.
Add dry ingredients and buttermilk to the creamed mixture in alternate aliquots, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. Mix until just incorporated.
Fold the mayonnaise into the mixture using a whisk.
Divide equally between the three prepared tins, smooth the tops and place in the oven. Bake until a skewer comes out barely clean.
Time in oven should be around 30 minutes or so. If not using a convection (fan) oven, rotate the tins after about 20 minutes to ensure an even bake. When ready, remove from the oven and leave to cool, in the tins, for about 20 minutes.
Turn out of the tins, remove the baking parchment and leave to cool completely on a wire rack.
Well, the cakes looked pretty dark, despite not using the right sugar or the right cocoa powder. They smelled pretty good, too. Now for the icing.
I’d always thought that buttercream was buttercream, but apparently I was wrong. There are lots of different buttercreams, and this recipe was for a swiss meringue buttercream, apparently smoother and maybe a tad less sweet than the normal kind. It uses egg whites (hence meringue), but they are heated so it is pretty safe and keeps well. It would be a new experience. It also called for superfine (or caster) sugar, rather than granulated or icing sugar. Again, I was out of luck in the supermarket for this ingredient.
I’ve always said that North American granulated sugar is closer in texture to caster sugar than the sort of granulated sugar we used to get in the UK, but it isn’t quite there. Apparently, for this recipe, it is important to use the right sugar type, as it dissolves quicker than standard granulated, making a smoother icing. Oh well, back to the do-it-yourself! A couple of cups of standard granulated sugar in my blender, on the ‘grind’ setting, and 30 seconds later I had my superfine sugar.
Icing
5 large fresh egg whites
250 g/ 1 ¼ cup superfine (caster) sugar
340 g/1 ½ cups/3 sticks unsalted butter, softened, cut into cubes
2 tsp vanilla extract
Pinch salt
200 g/ 7 oz good quality dark chocolate (70%)
100 g/ 3.5 oz good quality white chocolate
Wipe out the mixing bowl (use the one from your stand mixer, if you have one) with kitchen towel wetted with a little lemon juice, to remove any grease. Place the bowl over a pot of simmering water (not boiling). Add the egg whites and sugar and whisk, constantly and gently, until the sugar completely dissolves and the egg whites are hot. If you have a thermometer, the temperature can reach 160 F/ 71 C.
Take the bowl from the heat and whip, using a whisk attachment to your hand mixer or stand mixer, until the meringue is thick, glossy and the bowl feels neutral to the touch. A stand mixer is best as this can take 10 minutes or longer.
Swap to the beater attachments, set the mixer to low speed and start to add the cubed butter, a little at a time. Mix until fully incorporated and silky smooth in texture. If the mixture curdles, keep beating and it will become smooth. Add the vanilla and salt and keep beating until well combined.
Melt the two chocolates, separately, over simmering water. Allow to cool.
Separate the icing into 1/3 and 2/3. Add the cooled, melted white chocolate to the smaller portion and the dark chocolate to the larger portion, mix until fully combined.
Wrap the cake layers in plastic wrap and place in the freezer for 15 minutes. When chilled, remove from the freezer, unwrap and place the bottom layer on a cake board or serving plate (n.b., the cake can be ‘stuck’ to the platter with a little dob of icing, if needed.) Spread a layer of dark chocolate icing over the cake and place the next layer on top. Cover this layer with all of the white chocolate icing. Top with the final cake layer.
Cover the sides and top with the remainder of the dark chocolate icing, smoothing to taste (I’m no fancy icer, as you can see by my effort!).
I placed my cake in the fridge to ensure it all set, but it will keep well at room temperature, in an air-tight container, for a few days. It sliced really well, too, keeping its form nicely. I can happily say, this one was a hit!
It’s a big cake, though. Good for a party (when we can have them again), big appetites or, in our case, slicing and freezing. It’s the best way to stop eating the whole lot at once!
The Pudding Queen 
[…] sugar to use up. It also wanted buttermilk, so I made my own with 2% milk and lemon juice (see Celebration Time-Double Chocolate Devil’s Food Cake for instructions on how to do this). I’m not avoiding buttermilk recipes any […]
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[…] the swiss meringue buttercream that I’d made for last year’s birthday cake (see Celebration Time-Double Chocolate Devil’s Food Cake). That might work. By luck I’d also bought a bar of white chocolate, intending to use it to […]
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