Devil’s Food Cake

Devil’s food cake is a fluffy, intense chocolate cake that is darker in color than most chocolate cakes. By adding a few ingredients to cake mix, I created a devil’s food cake recipe that makes the best chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting. For birthdays, holidays, or any day, this devil’s food cake is not only the best but also the easiest chocolate cake recipe you will ever try.

Devil’s Food Cake Ingredients:

Devil's food cake is a fluffy chocolate cake. — Devil’s food cake is a fluffy chocolate cake.

According to Wikipedia, devil’s food cake is a type of chocolate cake invented in the United States in the early 1990’s. Although there is no clear consensus as to what is a devil’s food cake, make chefs and food historians say that a devil’s food cake is a chocolate cake that is fluffier, darker in color, and with a deeper chocolate flavor than a standard chocolate cake. Considering these characteristics, I set out to develop my own easy recipe.

Using a box of white cake mix as my starting point, I began by adding cocoa powder. I added a bit more than most chocolate cake recipes have. Instead of water, I opted for buttermilk because the acidity of buttermilk reacts with baking powder or baking soda to make baked goods such as cakes rise more, making them light and fluffy. The addition of white vinegar helps the fluffiness, too.

Devil's food cake using cake mix and cream cheese frosting. — Devil’s food cake using cake mix and cream cheese frosting.

The ingredients that really set this devil’s food cake apart from other chocolate cakes are the coffee and the molasses. Coffee is a common addition to devil’s food recipes because it is known to enhance chocolate flavor, but my addition of molasses seems a bit unique. Not only does blackstrap molasses help guarantee a dark color, but it also accentuates the chocolate flavor, too. Brown sugar, white sugar molasses, is a common ingredient in chocolate chip cookie recipes, so it makes sense that brown sugar or molasses would work well in a chocolate cake. Since I developed my devil’s food cake recipe with cake mix, I didn’t want to add more sugar; instead, I added molasses to the mix since the cake mix already contained sugar. Blackstrap molasses has the strongest flavor of all types of molasses, so it added another, deeper dimension to the flavor profile of the chocolate cake.

Although most devil’s food cake recipes call for chocolate frosting, I decided to use my no butter cream cheese frosting recipe. Not only is my cream cheese frosting recipe low in calories, but I also think that chocolate frosting would be “too much.” Argentine chefs are very selective about the flavors they combine, and they tend to add fewer flavors to a dish than American chefs: sometimes less is more.

However, my attempt to develop a devil’s food chocolate cake recipe almost ended in disaster because in the first try, I forgot to add oil to the cake. I thought for sure that it was going to end up a kitchen fail, so I made two just in case. I tried both right after they came out of the oven, and the no oil chocolate cake seemed slightly “off” at first. However, as I eat both cakes, I realized that the cakes were actually very similar in flavor; in fact, the only significant difference was that the no oil chocolate cake seemed to try out faster, specially where it was cut. Yet, even a week later, there were portions of the cake that were still almost just as moist as on the first day. The addition of chocolate pudding to the cake mix undoubtedly helped the cake to retain moisture.

Chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting is perfect with ice cream.

Even if you don’t normally like chocolate cake, I suggest that you give my devil’s food cake with cake mix recipe a try. By adding a few ingredients to a box of white cake mix, you can easily make a chocolate cake that has a depth of flavor unlike anything else.

If you like this chocolate cake recipe, be sure to try my version of the Southern classic red velvet cake with an Argentine twist.