Devil's food cake...oh yum

February is a month of birthdays in our family. In fact, its quite ridiculous - of the 9 members of my immediate family 4 have birthdays in February. My younger sister comes first on the 6th. So birthday cake was required.

Now then, as far as I'm concerned birthday cake means chocolate cake. Nothing else will do.

I decided to try out one of the recipes from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook.



The book has had terribly mixed reviews, but I love the cakes in the cafe so I decided it was definitely worth a go. It had to be Devil's Food Cake; surely the ultimate chocolate cupcake?

I was a little puzzled by some of the instructions in the recipe until I decided that it was written for people making cakes in a food processor. It wasn't too tricky to work out how to adapt it for those of us who don't think its worth paying £400 for a Kitchenaid.


(Even if they are pretty)

The method for this cake was quite different to how you'd normally make a sponge cake so I could see why practiced bakers might read it, decide it didn't make sense, adapt the method, and end up with a bad cake. I followed the instructions (well duh!) and it worked out just fine.

I iced the fairy cakes with vanilla frosting, but found I actually only needed half the recommended quantity. The cakes turned out moist and chocolatey but not heavy.

I do like chocolate cake.



Devil's Food Cake (makes about 12 cupcakes)
This is my adapted method for people making it by hand.

100g plain flour
20g cocoa powder (I used Green and Black's)
140g caster sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
pinch salt
40g butter (at room temperature)
NB: I used goat's butter which I'd never used before but it worked really well
120ml milk
1 egg
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 170C.
Put flour, cocoa, sugar and baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Rub in the butter until the mixture is the consistency of breadcrumbs.
In a separate bowl whisk together egg, milk and vanilla.
Pour half of the liquid into the flour mixture and stir to combine.
When well mixed add the other half of the liquid and mix until smooth. Don't over mix!
Spoon into cake cases and bake for about 20 minutes.

Allow to cool completely before icing.

Icing

Beat together 125g sieved icing sugar and 40g butter. Combine a tablespoon of milk and a drop of vanilla extract. Add the milk mixure to the icing sugar mixture a little bit at a time. Keep beating away until the whole lot is light and fluffy and well combined. Spread over your cakes and decorate as you see fit.