Published March 1, 2000.
To develop a devil’s food cake recipe with a very moist, velvety texture, we used a combination of unsweetened chocolate and Dutch-processed cocoa powder (which is less acidic than regular cocoa and therefore enhances browning) and mixed it with hot water rather than milk, since milk tends to dull the flavor of chocolate. A mixture of cake and all-purpose flour provided both structure and delicacy. Sour cream deepened the flavor of the cake in our devils food cake recipe and made the texture more substantial.
Regular, or natural, cocoa like Hershey's can be used with good results, though the cakes will bake up a bit drier, redder, and with slightly less chocolate flavor.
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