Too Many Recipes No. 5 Devil's Food Cake

This is the fifth in a series in which I will endeavour to cook every recipe (one each week) from a recipe book I started compiling 27 years ago when I was 15 years old.  You will find all the background for this courageous and calorie laden endeavour right here

Note the incredibly professional cake decorating skills!

I have to say, this was one of the recipes I was really looking forward to making when I started working my way through this recipe book.  In fact I think I have been looking forward to making it since I was 15, when I wrote it into my book.  It sounds so wonderfully decadent and promising and full of all sorts of evil.  All the things one looks for in a really good chocolate cake splurge.  I mean, if you're going to have chocolate cake, you might as well go all out, right?  Although, if we're really talking about a choc splurge, the ultimate trip would be a little number I have in one of my 'real' cookbooks called "Death By Chocolate" by Marcel Desaulniers.  A deadly little number indeed.  Just preparing the thing would do me in.  The recipe is broken up into sections, with stages allocated across three days.  That's three days to make one cake.  I wouldn't be letting anyone eat that one in a hurry.  I can imagine the shrieks "Are you mad?  That thing took me three whole days of my life to make.  And you think you can just eat it?" Death indeed!

Fortunately, this recipe is rather less complex and came together in quite a lot less time.  About ten minutes should do the trick.  No need for shrieking or death curses.  Phew!  Another 45 minutes in the oven, a bit of time to cool and decorate and we were done.  As has happened on more than one occasion, I caved into the pressure of my gathered 'peeps' (as it seems they are now being called) and carved into this cake within mere moments of its magnificent completion.  Lots of oohs and aahs and "Is that my piece?".  Just time to put the kettle on for a cup of tea to wash it down and we were in.

Some cakes are at their absolute best when they're really, really fresh, like my good friend the Raspberry Chocolate Cake (aka recipe no. 3).  That one has become a favourite here and was given special status as my birthday cake a couple of weeks ago, although this time I topped it with fresh raspberries and it was magnifique!  The old Devil's Food Cake does not come into this category however, preferring a few hours at the very least in which to settle into its rightful wickedness.  Thus we were all a little disappointed with our first taste.  The flavours just didn't seem to come together that well and it was overwhelmingly, well.....chocolatey and sweet.  Do you know what I mean?  So I popped it into the fridge and left it to get on with a little alchemy.  And it worked a treat.  Several hours later and another cup of tea with a snippet of cake on a nice little plate and all the flavours had melded quite satisfactorily, the cream in the middle had had time to make acquaintance with the strawberry jam (just a little something I had whipped up the day before) and the chocolate flavour had become deeper and  less overbearingly sweet. Much, much better.  Still not the kind of thing I would whip up for a day-to-day cake but something to save for a special occasion perhaps, or to share with a gaggle of chocolate cake loving friends.

Now onto the music.  I was thinking along the lines of Devil Went Down To Georgia, an obvious choice and I will admit to loving this song in the early 80s whilst in my tender youth so it was a treat to watch this clip and listen to all that fine ol' fiddlin' once again.  But then I have been thinking lately about a song by Sam Brown from about 1990 (if the shoulder pads are anything to go by) and the smoothness of her voice seems to match the smoothness of this cake.  So there are your choices for today.  Go choose, set up another tab so you can listen and read at the same time, put your devil horns on and we shall proceed with the recipe.

Devil's Food Cake

Ingredients

1 tbsp vinegar

1 cup undiluted Carnation evaporated milk*

1 1/2 cups self raising flour (or use plain flour with 3 tsp baking powder)

pinch of salt

1/2 cup cocoa

1 1/2 tsp bi-carb soda

1 1/4 cup sugar

2/3 cup melted butter

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

*If you're not familiar with it, evaporated milk is a sweet little concoction found in the supermarket.  Carnation is the brand most commonly found here and is the one I remember Mum buying. In fact, I suspect this recipe is from Carnation, judging by the emphasis on the name in the original recipe.  More than likely it was from a label off a tin many moons ago. You would probably find it somewhere close to the UHT milks.

Method

• Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius (375 Fahrenheit) 
• Grease 2 x 8" (20cm) cake tins and line the bases with baking paper or brown paper.  See here for more info.
• In a small bowl, add vinegar to the Carnation milk.  In a large bowl sift flour, salt, cocoa and sugar.  Pour in melted butter and 1/2 of Carnation milk.  Beat well for 2 minutes.
• Add remaining milk, eggs and vanilla and beat a further 2 minutes.
• Pour into 2 x 8" (20cm) cake tins and bake 35 - 40 minutes.
• Allow to cool slightly before removing cakes from their tins
• When completely cool, spread jam (if you like) over the top of one cake then whipped cream.  Top with the second cake then ice with chocolate icing.
• Decorate as you please, ignoring my magnificently dodgy efforts. (I put my name down for a series of cake decorating classes at high school many many years ago and made it through almost half of the first session until it became apparent to both my teacher and myself that I had, and still have, no real aptitude or patience for that level of fiddling around with little bits of icing.  We both agreed that I would be much happier and 'at home' in the pottery rooms so off I went and spent the remaining classes happily pottering away and singing along quite loudly to the radio, which I could because I was the only one in there.  Happy times!)
• Pop the whole shebang into the fridge for a couple of hours to do its thing.

What's to like about this cake:

• It is quick, easy and gives a good chocolatey result, thanks to the 1/2 cup of cocoa.
• It sounds impressive, although you kind of know that any food that includes the word 'devil' in the title is going to be bad news for your figure.

What's not to like:

• This is a coarse crumbed cake with quite a dense texture which makes it heavy.  You really only want one piece and you're done.  That is not necessarily a bad thing, but if you're after a light fluffy sponge, this recipe is not going to give it to you.  Go with the Raspberry Chocolate Cake instead.
• As mentioned above, you know it's not going to be kind to your waistline, but I say "all things in moderation".

Oh The Places You'll Go!

After yesterday's post on one of the most awful days I've had in a while, I have been searching all my experience and knowledge of myself and of the world, trying to find where I am going wrong.  Because surely life should not be like this.  And then, thanks to a friend, I found this little gift on youtube - a magical and unique telling of my family's absolute favourite Dr Seuss book "Oh The Places You'll Go".  I do believe I could watch this every morning of the year and still be inspired by it.

It reminds me that life can be great, that amazing things can happen and just as importantly, that we all go through slumps and that, as the great man says "When you're in a slump you're not in for much fun and unslumping yourself is not easily done".  So self -forgiveness is all important and therefore I am turning down the volume on that voice in my head that is telling me I am doing things wrong and I am tuning out, for a while, to a whole heap of voices from the media, the internet and from the fickle world of facebook that purport to provide self-help advice, when in fact self-promotion may better describe their motivation, and I am tuning in to my family, my self, (the one that really does know what is best for me) and letting in a big dose of self-forgiveness for messing up today and an even bigger dose of self-love so I can be more on track to getting things right tomorrow.

Full credit to 'Spirit Tokens of the Ling Qi Jing.  It has never let me down in times of need.

Days like this should not be allowed to happen.

How is it that life can go from relative efficiency and organisation (and the key word here is 'relative' as my life is never really efficient or organised, despite the collection of books on the subject weighing down my bookshelves) to a state of utter chaos, unhappiness and screaming children, in the space of a couple of days? That is the question pummelling it's way into my brain at the moment.  Is it an astrological thing hovering over our household? What the heck is going on?  In desperation I consulted 'Spirit Tokens of the Ling Qi Jing' by Ivan Kashiwa for guidance, asking it the question "How do I find my way out of this chaos and unhappiness?"  This is the answer I got:
"The matter you ask about will become further complicated before you receive help.  (Great!) If you share the problem with someone, it will be resolved satisfactorily.  But if you isolate yourself, you will find you cannot do it alone.  While you find yourself without help, you should delay things for a while."


I am not good at sharing problems or asking for help.  I am excellent at isolating myself and trying to go it alone.    Do you know the story of The Little Red Hen?  Me.  Me.  Me. And probably millions of other women out there. And maybe some men too. Although actually, she did ask for help didn't she, but no-one wanted to help her.  Not much incentive in that story to ask for help then. But I cannot leave this piece of advise unheeded so I am kind of cheating here.  Or maybe not. Instead of asking just one person over the phone, which I absolutely could not do anyway, I am asking all of you, "How do you find your way out of chaos and unhappiness when or if it hits your household?"  Please don't tell me I need to be more organised.  I already know it and have failed so many times in my attempts to get there that I have all but given up.

Think that maybe until I find an answer, I'll make some lunch and put everyone to bed for a nice afternoon nap.  Maybe things will be brighter afterwards.  Not one of my better days.