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How to make devil’s food cake the old-fashioned way by soaking the flour overnight for a melt-in-your-mouth treat for birthdays or other special occasions.
Devil’s food cake is often the birthday goodie my kids choose for me to make when their special day rolls around. Recently though, this recipe for chocolate chip cookie cake is giving it some good competition!
The inherent moistness of devil’s food cake combined with nutrient-loaded buttercream frosting makes for a melt-in-your-mouth experience that your child (and guests) won’t soon forget.
This old-fashioned version varies from modern recipes in that it is soaked in sour raw milk (or yogurt) overnight.
This simple, traditional step greatly improves flavor and moistness, while also significantly enhancing digestibility.
For those new to traditional cooking, soaking flour is one of the three methods used by ancestral cultures to prepare their grains.
The great thing about traditional preparation of grains is that you eat far less because you feel full faster. This is very important when it comes to cake and dessert in general because you won’t easily overeat!
Preparation Tip
The recipe below is for a large, double-layer devil’s food cake to serve many guests at a birthday party.
If you wish to make a single-layer cake only, cut the recipe in half and frost just the top.
Homemade Devils Food Cake (traditional method)
How to make devil's food cake the old-fashioned way by soaking the flour overnight for a melt-in-your-mouth treat for birthdays or other special occasions.
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 whole grain flour and feed the discarded bran to chickens, ducks or other birds. Removing the bran increases the lightness of the cake considerably without using toxic commercial white flour.
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Mix the sifted fresh flour with the yogurt or soured raw milk, cover, and leave on the counter overnight or for about 8 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 batter into 2 – 9×13 glass baking pans greased with expeller coconut oil, dividing the batter equally between the 2 pans.
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Bake at 350 °F/177 °C for about 30 minutes or until a knife or toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Take care not to overbake.
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Cool the cake completely and then remove one cake layer onto a serving platter and ice the top with raw butter frosting.
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Remove the second devil's 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 devil's food cake for up to 2 days in the microwave which makes the ideal, airtight pastry cabinet! After that, refrigerate any leftovers in a sealed container (there probably won't be any).
Recipe Notes
Substitute 1 cup carob powder and 1 tbsp chocolate extract for the cocoa powder if desired.
Substitute coconut sugar or date syrup for the cane sugar 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.
Also, can I freeze it?
What can I use instead of 3 cups of sucanat? I want to make it for my daughters birthday party this Saturday.
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!!!
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!
Thank you for posting this. Can’t wait to try this.
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.
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!
@Jennifer I have a recipe that only requre
cant wait to try…yum =)
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.
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.
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???
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.