Full question
Hello! I only have one tin to make the Devil's Food Cake. If I bake one half of the batter at a time then the second layer probably won't rise as well, since the problem is that the baking powder and bicarbonate of soda will have activated. What if I divide the batter into two parts before I add the baking powder and bicarbonate of soda, then add it to one part that goes to the oven, and once it is cooked I add baking powder and bicarbonate of soda to the other half and put it immediately in the oven. Would that work?
Our answer
Nigella's Devil's Food Cake (from KITCHEN) is a dark, moist chocolate sponge cake that is baked in two layers. Unfortunately making the batter and adding the baking powder afterwards can have varied results, as it is very difficult to get the baking powder to mix evenly into the prepared batter. In addition, liquids tend to toughen glutens in flour, so the longer the batter sits, the more it will affect the final texture of the cake. So overall it is not something that we would particularly recommend.
If you really have no alternative but to bake the layers of the Devil's Food Cake separately then you would probably need to make the cake batter two times, using half of the ingredients for each batch of batter. A couple of the ingredients are difficult to halve, even with digital scales, so we would suggest using 60g of butter in each batch and 110g of flour in each batch.
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