Devil's Food Cake

Devil's Food Cake

• 1 cup milk
• 3/4 cup cocoa
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1/4 cup sour cream*
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 cups sifted cake flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Heat milk in a small pan until bubbles begin to appear around the edges. Remove from heat.

Mix cocoa and white sugar together in a small bowl and slowly beat in warm milk. Let cool.

Cream the butter with the brown sugar. Beat in the eggs, sour cream and vanilla. Add cocoa mixture.

Mix remaining dry ingredients together and gently blend into butter mixture. Do not overbeat.

Turn into two well greased and floured 9-inch layer cake pans and bake 25-30 minutes. Cake should just begin to shrink from sides of pans and spring back when gently touched in the center. Cool on a rack for a few minutes, then turn out of pans onto rack to finish cooling.

Wait until completely cool before frosting.

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*if you do not have any sour cream a good substitute is buttermilk. Now you're probably less likely to have buttermilk than sour cream in the first place.....so a good substitute for buttermilk is to use milk and sour it yourself. Use one tsp lemon or lime juice per cup of milk and let stand to curdle about 15 minutes prior to using in the recipe. This cake goes well with pretty much any frosting, but I like the seven minute frosting, personally. It has a lot less fat than those frostings with butter or shortening in them. The only drawback to the seven minute frosting is that you have to use it and serve it right away as the egg whites will start to breakdown after 6 hours or so and while it won't affect the taste of the frosting, it will look like deflating foam.