This recipe for Devil’s Food Cake makes for an absolutely sensational birthday treat.
In fact, it is almost always the birthday goodie my kids choose for me to make for them when their special day rolls around.
The moistness of the cake combined with the nutrient loaded butter frosting I posted about recently makes for a melt in your mouth experience your child (and you) won’t soon forget!
This particular recipe for Devil’s Food Cake varies from other recipes due to the fact that it is soaked in sour raw milk to improve digestibility, break down the gluten in the wheat, and improve nutrient absorption from the wonderfully nutritious, fresh flour you are using to make it.
Soaking is one of the three traditional ways our ancestral cultures prepared their grains. The great thing about traditional preparation of grains is that you eat far less when these foods are prepared this way because they are more filling and nutritious. When a food is more nutritious, you need to eat much less to feel full and feel satisfied for longer periods of time.
For those of you who try this recipe for yourselves, please email me to let me know how you like it!
Soaked Devil’s Food Cake
Makes 2 – 9×13 cake layers
Ingredients
4 cups freshly ground flour
3 cups lightly soured raw milk
4 eggs
1 cup expeller pressed coconut oil
3 cups sucanat
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (you may substitute 1 cup carob powder and 1 TBL chocolate extract)
3 tsp baking soda
2 tsp vanilla
Instructions
Sift the fresh flour and feed the discarded bran to chickens, ducks or other birds. Removing much of the bran allows just a quick soak of the flour to be effective for improving digestibility and also increases the lightness of the cake considerably.
Mix the sifted flour with the soured raw milk, cover, and leave on the counter for about 7 hours. I usually mix the flour and the milk in the morning and make the cake in the afternoon.
Blend in the remaining ingredients. Pour into 2 – 9×13 glass baking pans greased with expeller coconut oil dividing the batter equally between the 2 pans.
Bake at 350F for about 30 minutes or until a knife or toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
Cool completely and then remove one cake layer onto the cake serving platter and ice the top with raw butter frosting.
Remove the second cake layer and carefully place on top of the frosted cake layer. Cover the remaining cake with more butter frosting.
Store for up to 2 days in the microwave which makes the ideal, airtight pastry cabinet! After that, refrigerate any cake leftovers (there probably won’t be any).
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
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{ 54 comments… read them below or add one }
Cake makes me feel better after reading the last few articles you’ve posted. Thank you for something that doesn’t depress me. It looks delicious.
Homemade cake makes all things better!
What do you recommend if I don’t have access to a grain mill or freshly ground flour? Your site has been so helpful! Got my first bottle of FCLO today, in fact! Thanks!
Just buy organic all purpose flour and put a grain mill on your wish list
You will love this cake when you make it with fresh flour for the first time!!
Woohoo! This came right in time! My daughters birthday is on Monday and I’ve been searching for a cake to make. Do you think almond flour would work okay with this recipe? Thanks!
Never tried it with almond flour. If you give it a try, please let us know how it turns out!
Fantastic timing! My hubby LOVES chocolate cake and his birthday is tomorrow! He will be THRILLED to have a surprise homemade cake!
Thanks SO MUCH Sarah!
Hi there this lloks delicious! Let me just say that I love love love your site, it has completely revolutionized the way I think about healthy eating. Anyway…I was wondering: if I buy wheat berries from my local bulk store and then grind it myself…is it fresh flour?
Maria Carolina\’s last post: Notifications, Refreshed
Yes, that is perfect! Try to find a grain co-op to buy wheat berries in bulk though .. you will save a lot going this route. They store well in large buckets with gamma lids even in hot garages for long periods of time.
Sarah, TheHealthyHomeEconomist\’s last post: Devil’s Food Cake
I have an assignment to do today and clearly now I cannot continue until I have baked this guy… thanks a lot, Sarah! :p
Can I just ask, is the cake incredibly sweet with the three cups of sucanet? Since I changed my diet for the better a few years back I find I really can’t handle extremely sweet desserts and usually halve the sweetener in standard recipes…
Thanks! x
Eliza\’s last post: Grain-free chocolate cake with espresso buttercream frosting
This recipe makes a large, double layer cake intended for a birthday party so feel free to cut in half for sure!
Sarah, TheHealthyHomeEconomist\’s last post: Devil’s Food Cake
OOOMMMGGG I cant wait to make this!!!!! And random question….I just got my dehydrated milk kefir grains in the mail yesterday and Im in the process of trying to rehydrate to use…tonite I drained the culture from the old milk and put in new milk (they say to do this for 5-7 days). When I was looking for the culture, its like I could barely find it!!! When I got the culture it wasnt totally intact but I was hoping it would come together a little bit! I sifted through the milk as much as I could and scooped out whatever clumps I thought was the grains and put them all together in the new milk. Are the grains supposed to start out like this? I hope they didnt get broken up in the mail and now they’re ruined. What do you think?
I would call or email the company and ask .. I have not ever attempted to rehydrate kefir grains before as I have just gotten fresh ones from a friend and they last for years and years.
Sarah, TheHealthyHomeEconomist\’s last post: Devil’s Food Cake
Perfect timing! I was going to check your site today to see if you had any cake recipes I could try for my daughter’s 1st birthday on Tuesday. I’ll be trying this one. Thanks!
Oh gosh.
Who needs Little Debbie’s?
Yum! I am gluten free perhaps I could go one more and use gluten free flour, sounds delicious!
Blegh… Not us anymore!
I need to figure out a good frosting for cake/cupcakes without all the sugar. I’ve tried unrefined sugar & coconut palm sugar, but it didn’t taste so good… Not sure why, since it was a regular butter cream recipe. My GOAL is to figure out how to make a half way nutritious fondant for wedding cakes!!! 
@Jennifer there is so much fat in this cake that it doesn’t cause issues when a once in awhile treat .. it’s also very very large – it’s a party cake – so feel free to make only half!
I never have enough milk to have it sour before using…how long is ‘lightly soured raw milk’ left on the counter before adding into the cake batter for soaking?
Also, how do you think this will turn out using fresh spelt flour?
Oh, I’ll make the whole thing!!!!
@Jennifer Ha, ha that’s funny
I actually make this cake only like 3X in a whole year (for my kids birthday .. fortunately my kids birthdays are not close to each other so the timing works out great).
Ha! Great use for the microwave! Of course, we don’t have one, but it’s genius nonetheless!
Thank you for this recipe!! YAY!!!
I’ve read not to use dairy for soaking as it actually interferes with something…I can’t remember what though. I think I read it in Rami Nagel’s book. Any thoughts?
The more liquid the soaking medium the better. Lightly clabbered milk or buttermilk would be more effective than yogurt for example.
Sarah, TheHealthyHomeEconomist\’s last post: Devil’s Food Cake
Thank you for this recipe!! I see that this is a big cake. I am thinking of making the whole thing..but put 1/2 in for cup cakes and make 2 smaller rounds for a layer cake. I don’t have sucanat. I am wondering if I can use my honey granules instead. I am going to try and will let you know. Now to sour my milk.
Years ago my Grandmother used to add Apple Cider Vinegar to her milk to sour it. Do you think that would work here?
Yes, that would speed things up. How much would you use? I’m wondering how that might affect the taste of the milk once its clabbered?
Sarah, TheHealthyHomeEconomist\’s last post: Devil’s Food Cake
She only used a few teaspoons. I never could taste the vinegar in her cakes. I will let you know.
Unfortunately, when a recipe calls for calls for whole eggs I can’t do it. I won’t destroy the integrity of the yolk by cooking it, I feel that is very unhealthy. This means less baked goods for me, which is probably a blessing. I am cutting way down on sweeteners and many foods (grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, dairy, fruit) because I suspect I have candida and leaky gut issues after growing up with antibitoics, junk foods, etc.
Also, In Nourishing Traditions it says sucanat is highly processed and they often add molasses back in for flavor and color. It lists sucanat as a sweetener to avoid, and says it is falsely marketed as healthy.
Actually, that is a myth. It doesn’t oxidize the cholesterol of an egg yolk to cook it or even scramble it. It is the obscene high temperature/high pressure processing of eggs in a factory that creates the dangerous oxidized cholesterol that we should avoid.
Sarah, TheHealthyHomeEconomist\’s last post: Devil’s Food Cake
Also, NT does NOT say sucanat is highly processed. It says that RAW SUGAR (i.e., turbinado sugar) is processed and to add back small amounts of molasses in a pinch if you can’t get sucanat.
Sarah, TheHealthyHomeEconomist\’s last post: Devil’s Food Cake
If you are healthy and not on GAPS, an occasional homemade sweet treat made with wholesome ingredients is fine. What would life be without cake???
Sarah, TheHealthyHomeEconomist\’s last post: Devil’s Food Cake
NT says of “raw” “natural” turbinado and sucanat sugars and florida crystals that they are filtered and a large part of the nutrients have been removed. It doesn’t differentiate between all of those, and lists them all under “the following sweeteners are used in many so-called health food products, but should be avoided.” pg 537 before the sweets recipes. it says small amounts of molasses may be added back in to give a light brown color, which i read as meaning the producer does that, but it could also mean for a consumer to do it i suppose, though i find sucanat to taste nice and molasses-y.
The yolk and oxidized cholesterol thing… could you point me to information on this or explain further? Of course, I think we can agree that it is better to eat the yolk raw for much better nutrition, but it does seem strange that we are warned not to cook yolks but at the same time we are not told to eat all our meats raw. I do find that I have a bad reaction to cooked eggs, and of course that could be partially because cooking denatures the protein, but my reaction could be due to a number of other reasons as well. Plus, I enjoy raw yolk.
Cake is wonderful and this recipe looks great, but yes I am starting the process of healing my gut a la GAPS. Also, the other week I made your raw butter fudge… I cut the recipe in half, but I ended up eating the whole thing in 2 days and gained 5 pounds! (I ate a POUND of butter!) I went totally crazy on it, it was just so good and like many others I have issues with self control sometimes. So I am going to focus on the more nutritious recipes, there are certainly enough to keep me busy and I don’t have the temptation of overindulging. I am experimenting with how I feel with very limited sugar. I read that our bodies are only equipped to digest about 9 grams of sugar a day, and that can easily be met through foods.
cant wait to try…yum =)
@Jennifer I have a recipe that only requre
Ah, i hate commenting on my phone…i’ll try again! So I have a recipe that needs little over 1/2 a cup of honey. And it is plenty sweet! If you want the recipe, I’ll post it!
Yes, calcium interferes with iron absorption so you can soak this cake in water plus a bit of cider vinegar instead if you like but it doesn’t taste as good. I’m not too worried if all the iron is not absorbed from the occasional birthday cake.
Thank you for posting this. Can’t wait to try this.
Has anyone made this recipe with gluten free flours? Could you please post what you tried and if it was successful? Thank you very much! I need a birthday cake recipe we can all enjoy that is tastes good enough for the relatives!
I am so glad that you are trying this recipie out, i think it is the BEST devils food cake recipie ever, you will be very happy with the results, im gonna try for it. Thanks for posting.
Perfect timing since we just sent out invitations for my teenagers’ birthday party. They are chocoholics so I’m excited about this one! Your icing recipe looks lovely. I usually pour homemade organic cherry pie filling on top of our choco cakes instead of icing (then refrigerate). I’ll ask my guys which they would prefer this year: cherries or your icing!
Also, why not use sprouted flour? If you did, how would you adjust the recipe? Thanks for all you do!
I don’t have access to raw milk, what would be a good sub? Yogurt, buttermilk etc…?
Also does this hold well enough to bake in a shape pan?? Does it come out evenly if the pan were oiled we’ll enough?? Thanks so much I can’t wait to try this for Fathers Day!!!
What can I use instead of 3 cups of sucanat? I want to make it for my daughters birthday party this Saturday.
Also, can I freeze it?
so, when I sift the flour, I’m not getting the bran separated out. Can you explain more? What do I use to sift it with ?
Can this cake be made with an equal amount of granulated coconut sugar? I have that on-hand but not sucanat. Thanks!
How much flour is there after its sifted? I don’t have a sifter but have figured out how to get some bran out but its generally more than what you’ve said on previous recipes. I don’t want to put too much flour.
I don’t know the exact answer to your question, but when I made this cake over the weekend I accidentally added an extra 1/3 c. cocoa powder. The cake still tasted great with the extra dry ingredient, so it seems like the recipe is pretty flexible.
Hi Sarah,
If I’m unable to soak the flour the night before, do I still just add all the ingredients together except for the sour milk when preparing the cake?
Thanks for your time!
Cassandra
I also would like to know what to use if raw milk is not available. Thanks!
What about making cupcakes with this recipe? What do I need to change?
Thanks!
Baked it. Ate it. Loved it! Printed it (for my fav recipes binder)!
Only things I did differently were: I used 2 cups fresh raw milk b/c I didn’t soak my fresh soft white winter wheat flour. =( Maybe next time I’ll take the time to try that part. And I used two 9 x 9 pans (not that it matters =). I used the buttercream icing, too. I ended up using 1/2 powdered rapadura and 1/2 powdered conf. sugar just b/c I don’t care for the strong taste of rapadura. Overall, I didn’t deviate too much. GREAT RECIPES! and best of all – I have all these ingredients in my pantry most all the time. =) Thanks a bunch.
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