This recipe for devil’s food cake makes for an absolutely sensational birthday treat.
In fact, devils food cake is almost always the birthday goodie my kids choose for me to make when their special day rolls around. Though recently, this recipe for chocolate chip cookie cake is giving it some good competition!
The inherent moistness of devils food cake combined with the nutrient-loaded butter frosting recipe I posted about recently makes for a melt in your mouth experience your child (and you) won’t soon forget and neither will the birthday party guests!
Homemade Devils Food Cake (traditional method)
This particular recipe for devils 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. Â 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 devils food cake for yourselves, please email me to let me know how you like it!
Homemade Devils Food Cake Recipe (traditional method)
This traditional recipe for devils food cake is easy and uses only whole ingredients instead of buying the chemical and GMO loaded cakes from the supermarket. Suggesting recipe for frosting too.
Ingredients
- 4 cups flour freshly ground is best
- 3 cups whole milk yogurt or lightly soured raw milk
- 4 eggs
- 1 cup expeller pressed coconut oil
- 3 cups sucanat unrefined cane sugar
- 1 cup cocoa powder
- 3 tsp baking soda
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
Instructions
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Sift the fresh flour and feed the discarded bran to chickens, ducks or other birds. Removing bran allows just a quick soak of the flour to be effective for improving digestibility and also increases the lightness of the cake considerably.
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Mix the sifted flour with the yogurt or 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.
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Blend in the remaining ingredients. Pour the devils food cake batter into 2 - 9x13 glass baking pans greased with expeller coconut oil dividing the batter equally between the 2 pans.
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Bake at 350F/177 C for about 30 minutes or until a knife or toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
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Cool devils food cake completely and then remove one cake layer onto the cake serving platter and ice the top with raw butter frosting.
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Remove the second devils food cake layer and carefully place on top of the frosted cake layer. Cover the remaining cake with more butter frosting.
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Store devils food cake for up to 2 days in the microwave which makes the ideal, airtight pastry cabinet! After that, refrigerate any devils food cake leftovers (there probably won't be any).
Recipe Notes
Substitute 1 cup carob powder and 1 TBL chocolate extract for the cocoa powder if desired.
Substitute coconut sugar or date syrup for the sucanat if desired. Do not use honey, as baking with honey is not healthy.
Budget-wise tip: Using homemade vanilla extract is much less expensive than buying it.
More Healthy Cake Recipes!
Love making cake using traditional methods and ingredients? Try these other old fashioned recipes too.
Melinda
Also, can I freeze it?
Melinda
What can I use instead of 3 cups of sucanat? I want to make it for my daughters birthday party this Saturday.
Megan
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!!!
Carrie R.
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!
Kat
Thank you for posting this. Can’t wait to try this.
thehealthyhomeeconomist via Facebook
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.
Julia Hansen via Facebook
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!
Julia Hansen via Facebook
@Jennifer I have a recipe that only requre
Nicole Rafferty via Facebook
cant wait to try…yum =)
Olivia
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.
Sarah, TheHealthyHomeEconomist
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
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
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???
Olivia
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.