Devil's Food Cake

Well, it's been a while. I was without a computer for... what seemed like forever. I sold my laptop and got an iPad, which I do love, but you can't upload photos to it.

Finally, today our HUGE iMac showed up and I can finally post this awesome cake I made for my Aunt's birthday!

I decided to make a chocolate cake from scratch, which is terrifying by the way, so I pulled out my Martha Stewart's Cupcakes book and picked the devil's food cake. YUM!

INGREDIENTS

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
3/4 cup hot water
3 cups AP flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/4 teaspoon salt
3 sticks unsalted butter
2 1/4 cup sugar
4 room temp eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 cup sour cream

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Whisk together the hot water and cocoa in one bowl and set aside. Whisk together the flour, soda, powder and salt in another bowl and set aside.

2. Over medium heat, melt butter and stir in sugar. Pour into an electric mixer and mix on a medium setting for about 4 minutes, until cooled.

3. Add eggs one at a time to mixer. Add vanilla and cocoa mixture until well combined.

4. Reduce mixer speed to low and add flour mix and sour cream in small batches until all is combined.

5. Grease and flour your pans (I used 2-8" pans and had enough batter to make about 6 cupcakes as well). Fill about half way with batter and bake in the oven for about 30 minutes.

Look at those perfectly domed tops! Amazing Martha, amazing!

 After fretting about the cake I went the easy route with canned frosting for between the layers and the sides of the cake. Lick spatula when done.

Here are the cute cupcakes I made. They never made it to Halloween though.

And the cake! I frosted between the layers and the sides with the chocolate frosting. Then I used my vanilla frosting recipe to star the top and the bottom border. My camera didn't quite capture the burgundy pink color of the frosting.

So here is a much better pic taken from Cousin Kelly!

And in case you were wondering, the cake was amazingly moist I was really surprised. I'm all for box mixes especially for the typical flavors. With the right brand you can get a great moist cake every time. For more special and exotic cake flavors a scratch recipe is a must but this chocolate cake blows all box mixes out of the water!

Enjoy!