Re: Devil's Food Cake

Posted by Gerard on June 10, 1997 at 13:53:00:

In Reply to: Re: Devil's Food Cake posted by Charles on June 09, 1997 at 12:44:52:

: Gerard,

: This is where I get confused.

: The baking soda would be used in the cake requiring the non alkalized cocoa to neutralize its acidity.

: Maybe in the begining the devils food used water, non alkalized cocoa and baking soda, who knows?

Well maybe thats the purpose for the soda, but who knows, the cake works fine without it but comes out reddish with it.
It doesn't know if theres an alkalized cocoa in there.
I worked for a long time making those types of choc cakes and never looked at whether the cocoa was alkalized or not, .most times we order cocoa and if they remember to ship it we just use whatever we get and a lot of it has no label, would it make any difference if I knew what it was ? I doubt it.
One of my customers says she has recipe books dating to the 1700's and its in there(devilcake), sounds fishy but she's gonna bring it in.
A lot of times what the lab people say is only half the story, I was told that yeast must have sugar to function, but look at french bread, the sugar might be present in the flour as a complex sugar (poly) or even in the salt. They do tend to analyze recipes to death, me I'm juz a baker.

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