- Hey, I'm John Kanell.
And today on "Preppy Kitchen",
we're making a delightfully decadent devil's food cake.
So let's get started.
First off, get that oven nice and hot.
350 degrees Fahrenheit.
And grab two 9-inch cake pans.
We're gonna butter and flour these.
That will be the glue that
holds a parchment paper round on.
I'm only telling you that because you need to have these
come outta the pan really easily
and a parchment paper round is gonna be key.
Pans are prepped.
We're gonna grab a large bowl out
and sift our dry ingredients together.
Into a large bowl that's under a sifter and over a scale,
I'm adding 240 grams, or 2 cups of all-purpose flour.
You really wanna be exact when you
measure the dry ingredients for this cake
because if you add too much flour,
it's not gonna have that fluffy, amazing texture.
It's gonna be a little dense and like, rahh.
Rahh.
1 teaspoon of salt. This will give us some contrast.
2 teaspoons of baking soda. In you go.
Normally, I do not like boxed cake mixes,
but I will say that those box to devil food cake mixes
have some science magic in them.
And they are so fluffy, it's wild.
When I developed this recipe, I did a lot of recipe testing
to give you a fudgy, but fluffy cake.
So I'm very excited to share this with you.
1/2 of baking powder. Sift those ingredients up.
If you wanted to use cake flour in this, by the way,
you totally can, just use the same gram measurement.
All right, my scale is done. I'm gonna give this a whisk.
This cake is one of Brian's new favorites.
He is a chocoholic and it hits all your buttons.
And the frosting is amazing, too.
We're gonna set this aside
and get to our whole wet situation.
I actually forgot to finish prepping my pans.
They needed just a little bit of flour for the edge.
It's not a must have, but I'm better safe than sorry here.
If your cake is cracked, no one can taste the difference,
but it's upsetting nonetheless.
Virgo feelings.
This cake has butter and oil
to give you the best of both worlds.
But I have to talk about the chocolatey situation happening.
So we're gonna use Dutch processed cocoa powder today.
You have to see the difference between Dutch and natural.
Natural cocoa powder is a little bit acidic,
so when you add it to your baked goods,
it'll react with the baking soda
and give you a puffy, fluffy, chocolatey cake, mm.
Dutch processed cocoa powder has been
treated in an alkaline solution.
Removes the acid, makes the color darker,
mellows the color out of it,
and it gives you a rich, fudgy cake.
We're gonna use this today.
It also gives you a darker chocolate look.
Can you use natural cocoa powder?
Definitely. You totally can.
Just be careful because
the cake might rise up a little bit higher.
It's not even a bad thing though.
Into a medium bowl I'm adding 1 cup, or 100 grams,
of the Dutch processed cocoa powder.
Normally, I would sift it out.
But to this, we're gonna add 1/2 a cup of veggie oil
and create, like, a cocoa slurry.
We're gonna whisk this up and you're gonna see it just
turn into, like, a black, beautiful solution.
Look at this.
This magic is why it's called devil's food cake.
Hundreds of years ago,
rich, decadent foods were called deviled.
So deviled eggs, for example.
It's a regular hard boiled egg.
You add some delicious, rich stuff in there, up the flavor,
now it's a deviled egg.
For a cake, it's devil's food cake just because
it's dark and rich and decadent.
The opposite would be angel food cake,
which is light, fluffy, and you know, the opposite.
Both delicious.
No cocoa powder was spilled.
No one has anything to see there.
I'm gonna grab my mixer and a paddle attachment.
Now for the fun stuff.
1/2 a cup of unsalted butter at room temperature.
It's 113 grams.
I just wanna cream it up first.
(mixer whirring) Break the butter up,
get it nice and smooth.
All creamed up.
It just takes a 30-second interval, or two.
I'm gonna add this rich, glossy,
mirror-like chocolate into my butter.
To this mixture, I'm adding 1/2 a cup of light brown sugar.
I'm just gonna break it up with my fingers
to make sure there's no lumps.
It's one of my pet peeves.
'Cause your mixer can't really break lumps up very well.
So it's a nice move just to crinkle it up with your hands.
What would you call this?
Mushing it up with your hands?
Breaking it up with your hands?
So add 1/2 cups, or 300 grams, of granulated sugar.
In you go. Mm.
It's a big cake, you have a lot of ingredients.
Now we're gonna mix this up for about five minutes,
until it's really light and fluffy.
I wanna beat some air into here.
And yes, you'll definitely have to scrape the bowl down
and I'll show you why. (mixer whirring)
You have to see how dark, beautiful, and amazing this is.
So that Dutch processed cocoa powder is just
rich, fudgy, and amazing.
However, rich, fudgy, and amazing for me,
streaks of butter throughout for you.
Let's scrap the bowl down.
We're gonna keep mixing this for
just a few minutes on medium. (mixer whirring)
We want it super light and fluffy.
And in the meantime, let's crack some eggs
into our measuring cup,
just so they're all ready with no shells.
(mixer whirring) All right, nice and fluffy.
Now we're gonna add the 3 room-temperature eggs,
along with a tablespoon, or 15 ML, of vanilla.
(mixer whirring) Smells amazing.
One last scrape of the bowl down.
Before I move on, I just wanna tell you
I measured out 1/2 a cup of sour cream.
This gives us even more richness
and just a wonderful texture.
And I'm measuring out 1/2 a cup of milk, as well.
It's a couple extra steps than maybe a normal cake,
but the payoff is amazing texture and taste.
You're gonna fall in love with this cake
and use it for so many different recipes.
(mixer whirring)
Mix on medium after you scrape the bowl down
just for a few seconds more.
And then we're gonna move this to low.
Actually, we're gonna move it to stir, the lowest setting.
I'm gonna add in 1/3 of my dry mixture.
I'm gonna add in 1/2 of the milk. Bloop.
Half of the sour cream.
And this cake, by the way, gets very loose.
It is, like, a liquid-y batter
and that's how you know it's gonna be amazing.
Another 1/3 of the dry mixture. The rest of the milk.
Adding wet and dry ingredients in alternating batches
lets you have more control over the mixing.
If you just dumped things in, you would have
pockets of wet, pockets of dry,
and some things would be overmixed.
No one would be happy.
Last bit of the flour.
I'm actually gonna finish stirring this by hand.
And you don't even need to let this mix completely.
But I will say that I'm
done with my paddle attachment for now.
And you can see, look at this texture.
It's like chocolate pudding.
I cannot wait for this to bake up.
Before I go to my last step,
I'm gonna give this bowl a scrape down
because there is some chocolate pudding in the middle
with some super dark chocolate on the bottom.
And I want this to be a little bit more mixed in,
but not all the way.
The magical step in this is 1 cup of hot coffee.
And yes, it's coffee. No, you're not gonna taste it at all.
It's really gonna amp up the chocolate flavor.
And I get a lot of questions from people
on whether or not you have to use coffee.
The answer is no, you don't.
I often use, like, hot water for these recipes
if I'm making it for the kids.
Just because they have a lot of energy,
they don't need any caffeine. (laughs)
But I will say the taste is, like, a little bit more flat.
Like, I do miss the coffee in there.
So you could use decaf, or hot water, in a pinch.
Switch to a whisk and I'm gonna whisk this up
and you're gonna see a magical change in consistency.
Look at that. It immediately liquefies.
So your goal now is just to carefully whisk this together
without making a mess.
Challenge accepted.
And once you have a uniform consistency,
we can pour this in.
What? Look at this. That's magical.
Divide your batter equally.
Today, you notice I'm not using cake strips just because
this special batter will rise up evenly on its own.
This goes into the oven for 40 minutes? Or how long?
40 to 45 minutes, or until the centers are set,
and you'll see the edges pull away from the pan.
But I'll show you what that looks like. In you go.
My cake layers are out of the oven and cooling.
We wanna let them cool in the pan completely
before we mount them.
Dismount them?
And in the meantime, I'm gonna make
a really easy, delicious, chocolate buttercream.
The full recipe's on the blog.
There's also a YouTube video for that.
So there's links in the description box below,
but I'm gonna walk you through the highlights.
1 and 1/2 cups of unsalted, room-temperature butter.
I'm gonna whip this on high for five minutes
until it is light and cloudy.
(mixer whirring)
What a difference five minutes makes.
This is a cloud of butter.
Now we're gonna add in 1/2 a cup of cocoa powder.
(laughs) Oh, dear.
Well, well, well. Into the bowl, if you can.
I'm also adding in 3/4 of a teaspoon of salt,
measured exactly.
And 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla.
(mixer whirring) We're gonna mix this on low
until it's nice and combined.
Once that's all mixed in, we're gonna add
6 to 8 cups of powdered sugar.
It's kind of to taste, so it's up to you.
And you can add them in a cup at a time,
letting it mix in on low.
Your buttercream will get very thick,
but we'll thin it out with some cream.
(mixer whirring) It's about 3 tablespoons,
but you can add more sugar, less sugar,
or a bit more cocoa powder, more cream.
It's up to you and how you like it to taste.
There we go.
My final tip for the buttercream is to use a spatula
and just knock some of those big air bubbles out.
This will give you that silky buttercream look,
without those frosty air bubbles in it.
Now we're gonna assemble our cake.
Grab a cake plate.
Normally, I put these on cooling racks,
but this recipe actually cools completely in the pan.
So all I need is a dollop of buttercream to hold it down.
It's a little bit of glue.
You can use the spatula just to double-check
that there are no sticky points.
And then. (pan clanging)
And then it comes out just like a charm.
That's why you have paper.
If you wanna have a four-layer cake,
you can carefully cut this down the middle,
but I actually love the frosting to cake ratio
of two thick, delicious, amazing, fudgy layers.
It's also a really delicate cake,
so if you're cutting it in half, be forewarned,
be careful, and no crying if it cracks.
All right. Add a nice amount of frosting onto the top.
Smooth that out to the edge.
So when things cool completely,
and it's a cold day, so the counter's really cold,
the butter can harden a bit,
which is why it stayed in the pan.
Don't worry.
Just give your cake a little tap on the side
and some lateral pressure will dislodge it.
Okay. It's free. It's free.
A little tap was all you needed.
And this smells so good, I can't even tell you.
Actually, I can tell you, it smells so good.
All right, that looks great.
We're gonna cover this in frosting.
And then Brian and Lachlan and George are gonna dig in.
I can see the cake moving as I
pull the frosting this way and that
and that's how you know you have a tender, amazing cake.
Okay. I covered my cake. All the frosting is used up.
And now I just wanna show you
a really quick, swoop-y finish.
So get it covered. You don't want any cake exposed.
Then use either an offset spatula like this,
that has a nice, rounded edge, or a regular rubber spatula.
And you're just going to start making little, wavy swoops.
There's no wrong way, it should just look kind of organic
and have some extravagant flourishes like that.
This cake is about to disappear so quickly.
Fudgy, moist, chocolate amazingness,
but so light and fluffy still, it's basically magic.
I hope you get a chance to make this recipe.
And if you like my videos, check out my chocolate playlist.