Father's Day Devil's Food Cake

It's one of those weekends where you want to bake something for the sake of trying a recipe. Father's Day Sunday was one of those excuses for the trialling a Devil's Food Cake - also known as a dark rich layered chocolate cake. Even though the husband is not fond of cakes I still went ahead. ;)

This recipe came from an old ripped page from Saveur magazine which I've tried before just not with the icing. They titled it "Aunt Fan's Devil Food Cake". The cake itself is very good and rich enough for our endeavour. The icing sugar (confectioner's to some of you) was halved but I still find it too sweet. So I was wondering what it would be like with 6 cups of icing sugar! *shudder* I further reduced it to 2 cups but I'll find out when I try it again if I have to reduce further. The other problem I had was the size of the pans. It did not say that you should use high-sided pans and all I had were two 1-inch high layer pans. Maybe it could have risen higher if I had the right pans.

Like all popular recipes there are hundreds, if not thousands, of versions of this scrumptious cake. I would venture with other renditions later but for now here is my adapted recipe from Saveur.

Devil's Food Cake

1 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
1/4 cup boiling water
2 1/2 cups plain flour - sifted
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter - softened
2 cups light brown sugar - tightly packed
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
170 g  dark chocolate (70%) - melted and slightly cooled

1. Preheat oven to 160°C/fan 140°C/325°F. Grease and line two deep 8-inch (20 cm) round baking pans (sides should be at at least 2 inches high).
2. Combine and stir together the bicarbonate of soda with the boiling water in a small bowl and set aside.
3. Mix the flour and salt in a medium bowl and set aside.
4. In a big bowl, beat the butter with the brown sugar until fluffy.
5. Add the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition.
6. Beat in the buttermilk and flour mixture alternately in 3 batches.
7. Add the bicarbonate of soda mixture and melted chocolate and beat until smooth.
8. Divide the batter between the two prepared pans.
9. Bake until a skewer poked in the middle comes out clean - about 45-55 minutes.
10. Set cake pans on a rack to cool. Remove from pans.
11. Place 1 cake on a plate and spread about 1 cup of the icing on top.
12. Put the 2nd cake on top and spread the remaining icing on top and all around the cakes.

Chocolate Buttercream Icing

1/2 cup butter - softened or melted
1/2 cup double cream (heavy cream)
2 cups icing sugar (confectioner's) - sifted
1/4 cup cocoa powder - sifted
2 tsp vanilla extract

• Put all ingredients in a bowl and beat until fluffy and well combined.

In this last picture the cake has spent the last 24 hours in the fridge so the icing did not look glossy anymore. But it's still scrumptiously good!