The delicious story of the devil’s cake, the cake made famous by the movie “Matilda”

Miss Tronchatoro accused Bruce Bolaños in front of the whole school of having eaten his chocolate cake. “The thinnest and most delicious cake in the whole world”. Faced with this, the minor, undeterred, replied that “my mother is better”. Thus, in 1996, one of the emblematic scenes of the film occurs Mathilde, the moment when the director forces him to eat a huge cake overflowing with chocolate, an icon of American cuisine since the turn of the century.

“Bruce! Bruce! Bruce! Echoed across the huge room as she devoured the preparation.

Based on the book by Roald Dahl (the same writer of Charlie and the chocolate factory) Released in 1988, the film which features small plot changes from the written version was a box office failure when it was released, but over time it has managed to capture the attention of audiences and to raise it to the rank of icon of 90.

This devil cake, as its original name, is nothing more than the polar opposite in flavor, color and texture than Angel Food Cake Invented in the late 1800s, according to legend, by black cooks from Saint-Louis. But it took a bit of a wait for its counterpart to arrive, as the relatively inexpensive unsweetened cocoa powder for cooking hit the U.S. market in the early 1900s.

The first publication where the recipe is written is in the 1903 edition of the Settlement Cook Book, a book published in Wisconsin intended to compile “recipes, cooking techniques, nutritional information, service procedures, and other useful information to help young women raise their families.” Because there were many chocolate cakes before, of course, but Devil’s Food Cake is more than just a cake, it’s more.

“The first thing to do to make a Devil’s Food Cake is to always have good raw material, good butter, good flour, cocoa is essential, bitter, it’s not the boys’ breakfast. . Bicarbonate is used as a leavening agent which also helps to enhance the color of cocoa. And another ingredient that is used that a lot of people don’t know is coffee, not because its flavor will stay, but because it enhances the taste of chocolate, in this case the taste of cocoa, ”he said. he started. Isabel Vermal his interview with Infobae.

The renowned pastry chef, the one who He has two kitchens in his house, “one inside and one outside, because the smells of salty do not enchant me and the salty oven does not mix with the sweet oven”She comes from a family where they didn’t cook much, in fact cooking was considered “torture”, and what later became a way of life in the beginning was playing with her daughter.

“I found out that I liked it with my oldest daughter, when she was little we started cooking something together, we pretended to have a cooking show, she was Juanita, I was Doña Petrona and my husband was the cameraman, ”Vermal recalls,“ and I started to realize I was super interested, so while i was working in tech i started to read a little, when i was traveling i was interested in this world“. And that game started to transform “one day the company I was working for was merged into another, in a pretty stressful process, and as if to get something out of work I decided to study the career of pastry chef at the Gato Dumas school, which was a complement to everything I read and did ”.

“It would be nice to do something about it”She once told her husband when he started his studies, but as so often it could be a simple desire that goes away, however: “I am quite a curious person and by nature an entrepreneur. Also, when you work in the tech world or in companies, you realize that at some point you will be out of place in the company and you have to start thinking with some anticipation about what you are going to do with your life. , and it was quite motivating, Why not try what was good and fun? And so I asked my husband, who sent me to do a business plan, but after so many years as a business, a business plan is the easiest thing for me. With that, I directly opened Smeterling ”, his pastry shop.

“Chocolate is a wonderful ingredient”, details the main ingredient of Devil’s Cake, “but first you have to know the differences between a chocolate and a pastry bath, because there are people who naturally confuse them, especially because of a price problem. The chocolate should contain cocoa butter and cocoa mass, which does not contain the batter soaking. The first thing I try to get people to do is read the labels, know what they’re buying, and treat it with affection. It is one of the most beautiful raw materials to cook, but you have to be careful when melting it, for example. It’s absolutely versatileYou can use it for baked preparations, you can use it for decoration, for molding. It is almost as versatile as the egg, it will never make you look bad, it is loved all over the world, there are few people who do not like it ”.

Regarding the cake, he also specifies that “it is always accompanied by a chocolate ganache, that there you have to make sure that you get covered chocolate, which contains cocoa butter and is used for the filling and garnishing.

Pastry is going through a very special moment, and Vermal knows it very well: “There is a health problem which is very important and which leads to review the preparations, the use of excess sugars, fats, the question of flour. also in excess. The recipes have changed a lot over time and one of them keeps getting renewed. Doña Petrona’s 12-yolk flan, for example, with a huge amount of sugar, which keeps changing. My grandmother, for example, used twice as much sugar for her custard as I did. For a candy, for example, the natural proportion was always for a kilo of fruit and a kilo of sugar, and now I use 650 grams “

But there is also a challenge, “for people to cook again, because The time you no longer spend cooking causes you to start eating industrialized things and a lot of them are very questionable.. There is a myth that baking is a problem because of the raw materials, because you use a lot of sugar, a lot of flour and the like, but you also have to take into account the baking again, using ingredients and taking it into account again. doing it yourself, without using preservatives or many other things, it seems to me that we have to reassess that ”.

For more than 15 years, every May 19, this historic preparation has been celebrated in the United States., and the passage of time has caused the celebration to spread around the world, and everyone has had the opportunity to take at least a day to remember this classic.

DEVIL’S CAKE

Ingredients

For the cakes

200 gr of 0000 flour

300 g icing sugar

60 gr of bitter cocoa

1 teaspoon of baking soda

½ teaspoon of salt

120 gr of cold butter, cut into cubes

125 cc of coffee

125 cc of milk

2 eggs

For the ganache

560 gr of chocolate icing

650 cc of cream

Treat

For the cake: sift the flour, powdered sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt in a bowl. Add the cold butter and incorporate by hand until it forms a fine sand. You don’t have to see lumps of butter. Reserve.

Mix the liquids in a bowl: coffee, milk and eggs. Add to dry, integrating completely with a whisk. Distribute the preparation and place them in two removable saucepans 20 cm in diameter with baking paper at the base. Bring to a preheated oven at 170 ° / 175 ° for 30 minutes or until pierced with a stick, it comes out dry. Let cool to room temperature and, if possible, chill in the refrigerator for a few hours before assembly.

For the ganache: chop the chocolate by placing it in a bowl. Reserve. Put the cream in a saucepan. Boil. Pour over the chopped chocolate. Leave to stand for a few minutes until the cream has melted the chocolate. Fully integrated with a metal whisk. Let it cool to room temperature and then put it in the fridge for a few hours until it solidifies.

For assembly: place one of the discs on a rotating table or base, removing the baking paper. Fill with the chocolate ganache. Place the bottom side of the second disc up so that the cake is flat. Garnish with chocolate ganache

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