Devil's Food Cake Murder (Hannah Swensen, #14)(21)

“So I would have been totally unsuitable?”

“Oh, my yes!” Delores glanced up at the clock on the wall. “I’m late, dear. I really have to rush.”

Once her mother had left, Hannah sat down to wait for her cakes to come out of the oven. Regency England didn’t sound like a very good place to live if you were an independent woman. Every time she thought the current political climate was intolerable, she’d remember what happened to women then and thank her lucky stars she hadn’t been born back in Regency times.





RED DEVIL’S FOOD CAKE

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position.

1 cup water

? cup (1 and ? sticks, 6 ounces) salted butter

? cup brown sugar

? cup white (granulated) sugar

1-ounce square unsweetened chocolate (I used Baker’s)

1 teaspoon instant espresso coffee powder

1 and ? cups white (granulated) sugar

? teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

? teaspoon baking powder

? cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 eggs (room temperature—float them in a cup with hot water if you forgot to take them out of the refrigerator last night)

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3 cups cake flour (I used Swansdown)***

*** - If you don’t have cake flour, you can use 2 and 2/3 cups all-purpose flour. Your cake won’t be as light in texture, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing when it comes to chocolate cake!

Combine the water, butter, white sugar, and brown sugar in a small saucepan on the stovetop.

Break (or cut) the square of unsweetened chocolate into two parts and add them to the saucepan.

Turn the heat to MEDIUM HIGH and heat the mixture, stirring frequently, until the butter melts.

Continue to stir until the mixture is smooth and the chocolate has melted.

Pull the saucepan off the heat and add the teaspoon of instant espresso coffee powder. Stir it until the espresso powder dissolves.

Let the mixture cool while you start in on the rest of the cake.

Prepare two 9-inch round cake pans by spraying the insides with baking spray (the kind with flour in it). Tear off two sheets of parchment paper slightly larger than the bottom of your cake pans. Stack the parchment paper, place one cake pan on top, and trace around the bottom with a pen or pencil. Staying inside the pen or pencil mark, cut out the tracing you made. Fit the paper circles into the bottoms of your prepared pans, and then spray the parchment circles with baking spray.

Hannah’s 1st Note: This cake is easy to make with an electric stand mixer, but you can also do it with a hand mixer or even completely by hand.

Measure out one and a half cups of white sugar. Add about a third of it to the mixing bowl. (Just eyeball it—you don’t have to be exact.)

Add the half-teaspoon of salt, the teaspoon of baking soda, and the ? teaspoon of baking powder to the mixing bowl.

Turn the mixer on LOW. Let it run for thirty seconds or so and then shut it off. (If you do this by hand, make sure everything is thoroughly mixed.)

Add the second third of the sugar to your bowl, turn the mixer on LOW again, and mix it for another thirty seconds or so.

Measure the cocoa powder and add it to your bowl. Mix it in on LOW speed (Take it from me, you don’t want it all over your kitchen!) for another thirty seconds or so.

Pour in the final third of sugar, turn the mixer on LOW again, and mix for a full minute.

With the mixer still running on LOW, add one egg to your bowl. Mix it in thoroughly.

Add the second egg to your bowl and mix that in thoroughly.

With the mixer still running on LOW add the 2 teaspoons of vanilla and mix it in thoroughly. Turn off the mixer.

Feel the outside of the saucepan with the chocolate and butter mixture. If it’s not so hot it could cook the eggs, you can work with it now. If it’s still too hot, let it cool a little more.

When you’re ready to add the chocolate and butter mixture, turn the mixer on MEDIUM speed and SLOWLY pour half of the mixture into your bowl. Mix it in thoroughly, and then shut off the mixer.

Now measure out your cake flour by scooping it up and then leveling it off with the blade of a table knife. DON’T PACK IT DOWN IN THE CUP.

Add half of the flour to your bowl, turn the mixer on LOW, and mix it in thoroughly.

With the mixer still running on LOW, add the other half of the chocolate and butter mixture to your bowl, pouring it in SLOWLY and mixing it thoroughly. Shut off the mixer.

Add the rest of the flour to your bowl. Turn your mixer on LOW and mix until everything is well incorporated. Increase the mixer speed to MEDIUM and mix for a full minute. Then shut off the mixer.

Take the bowl from the mixer and give the batter a good stir by hand, making sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl. When you’re satisfied that the cake batter is well mixed, divide it as evenly as you can between the two cake pans.

Bake at 325 degrees F. for 20 to 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the pan comes out clean. (Mine took 22 minutes.)

Hannah’s 2nd Note: If you want to make this cake into mini cupcakes, fill paper-lined or greased mini-cupcake tins ? full with batter. Bake them at 350 degrees F. for 15 minutes.

Remove the pans from the oven and cool them completely on a wire racks. To remove the cakes from their pans, simply run the blade of a table knife around the inside edges of the pans and tip the cakes out.