Devil’s Food Cake

Devil’s food cake is an American dark chocolate cake. Noting that the first recipe appeared in 1905, Mariani (1994) suggests that the cake received its name ‘because it is supposedly so rich and delicious that it must, to a moralist, be somewhat sinful, although the association is clearly made with humour’. Its dark colour, achieved by chocolate frosting which covers the entire cake, contrasted with the snowy white of the earlier angel food cake.