Nana’s Devil’s Food Cake (Gluten Free)
This is another recipe I snagged off r/Old_Recipes over on Reddit. This is one that blew completely up and seemed to be all that people were posting about 4-5 years ago, but I hadn’t actually gotten around to trying the cake until now. We haven’t been eating so many sweet baked goods around here, but my birthday coming up sounded like an excellent reason to go ahead and put together an extra-rich chocolate cake.
The original recipe post, for reference: Known only as ‘Nana’s Devils Food’. Best chocolate cake ever, guaranteed, in our family for at least 80 years.
I decided to bake this (mainly) as cupcakes, with a very peanutty peanut butter frosting. Which looks more matte and fudgy in person, than under this terrible lighting in our kitchen.
But, these turned out sooo good, y’all. It’s a simple recipe using very basic ingredients, and all the adaptation needed was a straight substitution with the Multipurpose GF Flour Blend that I just posted. But, this is probably the moistest, richest all-cocoa chocolate cake I have ever tried. That person’s Nana had the right idea.
As written, this recipe will easily make a 9×13 or 33 x23x5 cm rectangular cake, or a 10″/22-23cm bundt pan. I debated halving the recipe, but that meant less cake!
Or, it will fill something like 18-20 cupcakes, or as I chose to do here: a dozen cupcakes for now, plus a two-person side cake to keep for later. That is in a 1L glass oven-to-freezer storage container from IKEA, with the handy clamp-down lids.
Nana’s Devil’s Food Cake
Materials
Wet Ingredients
- 1 cup neutral oil of choice (250ml)
- 2 cups granulated sugar (500ml)
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup coffee – cooled but not cold (250ml)
- 1 cup milk (250ml
- 1 tsp vanilla extract or 2 tsp. Swedish type vanilla/vanillin sugar
Dry Ingredients
- 2 cups
Multipurpose Gluten Free Flour Blend (500ml, or 260g of this particular blend) - ½ tsp salt
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 2 tsp baking soda / sodium bicarbonate
- ¾ tsp xanthan gum
- ¾ cup cocoa (65g)
No Cook Peanut Butter Icing (for 12 cupcakes, or a half-batch cake)
- ½ cup peanut butter (120ml)
- 3 tablespoons butter melted
- ¾ cup powdered / confectioners' sugar (180ml)
- 2 tablespoons milk or enough to get the texture you want
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract or 1 tsp. Swedish type vanilla/vanillin sugar
Instructions
- This is an easy cake to put together. First, start the oven preheating to 375℉ / 190℃.
- Combine your dry ingredients in a bowl. Here, I sifted everything in through a strainer, then stirred it together well to mix.
- Whisk the sugar and oil together in a suitable sized mixing bowl. It won't get fluffy like creaming with butter, so just combine them well. Mine actually used around 1¼ c. sugar with the remainder split between erythritol (which behaves more like sugar) and granulated Splenda/sucralose to make the finished cake slightly less sugary–and that worked great. For best results, you do want to substitute other sweeteners in proportions like that alongside sugar in sweet baked goods like a cake which rely on the sugar for consistency.Whatever dry sweetening you prefer to use, whisk in the eggs until it's all looking smooth.
- Now add in the liquids and vanilla, and whisk it all smooth. Like me, you may question if this is too wet–but, it all works out!
- Gradually work in the dry mixture until you have a smooth thinnish batter. No need to worry about overdeveloping gluten in this flour, but if you overbeat it will knock leavening bubbles out.
- Grease/flour the cake pan, Here, I chose to use a cupcake tin and some convenient squeeze margarine well distributed around the top before smearing it around with a paper towel. Easy pan greasing is one of my main uses for the stuff, and this is a new variety I decided to try with part butter oil for better flavor.
- Fill your pan(s), and tap it on the counter gently to knock out any bigger air bubbles.
- This recipe size did require either another smaller batch of cupcakes, or an overflow pan to hold the rest of the batter. I opted to make a small unfrosted side cake to freeze for later.
- Bake for 25-30 minutes or so, or until a toothpick or skewer in the center comes out with a few moist crumbs on it. The cupcakes took just about 20 minutes, and the glass pan closer to 30.
- Looking good! Let the pan cool on a rack. (And, in this case? Bake the overflow cake which was waiting in the fridge.)
Optional Peanut Butter Icing
- I did not go overly precise on measurements here, and it doesn't really need to be. There looked to be roughly ½ cup of peanut butter left in that open jar, so I rolled with that as enough to cover the cupcakes.
- Stir together the peanut butter and melted butter in a bowl until it's smooth.
- Also stir in the vanilla extract at this stage, if you're using it. Mine is in a powdered sugar base, so I just added it in with the rest of the sugar.
- Add about half of your powdered sugar. This may not be totally necessary here, but mine was lumpy enough that I chose to put it in through a strainer.
- Thoroughly mix, and this will probably start going pretty thick. Stir in at least half the milk.I was initially skeptical that this icing would need the whole amount of milk called for in the inspiration recipe. But, it will probably take the whole 2 tablespoons, and possibly a splash extra at the end as the peanut butter absorbs the liquid.
- Repeat the procedure with the rest of the ingredients. You are aiming for it to look a little looser than this. The peanut butter WILL slurp up a lot of liquid, and I would recommend letting the frosting mixture sit at room temperature until your cake finishes cooling the rest of the way.Then you can adjust the consistency as required with small amounts of milk and/or powdered sugar.
- This icing will not be particularly spreadable, with more of a fudgy texture. The cake is moist enough that you'll tear the top completely up if you do try to spread it around. I would recommend distributing dollops around the top of the cake, then gently patting them around with a rubber spatula.
- There are more spreadable peanut butter icings out there, but I was specifically going for less sweet and intensely peanutty with this variation. It did turn out absolutely delicious on this devil's food cake.
- Serve, and enjoy! The remaining cupcakes have kept well for several days, well covered at room temperature. The crumb still tastes just as moist and fresh, likely thanks partly to the amount of oil in there.
