Design*Sponge » Blog Archive » in the kitchen with: fred flare {red devil’s food cake}

I love the idea of finding an old cake recipe and making it. Those are usually the best ones, and the ones we find today are just trying to recreate what grandma used to make! Chris and Keith of Fred Flare found this recipe at Hable Construction and thought it would be perfect to share with you! As I’m always looking for the next best chocolate cake recipe (the best two I’ve tried so far are from the Guru of Ganache, Marcel Desaulniers, and believe me I’ve tried hundreds!), so I will try this one out, too. If any of you try it first, let us know! Click here for the full recipe or just click “read more” below. -Have a cool weekend (because it’s hotter than the 4th of July in Rome!), Kristina

About Chris and Keith (in their own words): We’re Chris Bick and Keith Carollo. We have run fredflare.com now for ten years which I really can’t believe. Chris was formerly an architect and I was/am a graphic designer but now I’d say we see ourselves as retailers, trying to make the world a happier place with the cheerful items we sell and the goofy things we do. OMG, we’re opening a real live store in Greenpoint! Just got the keys last week. It will probably open in late Sept/Oct. Should be fun. (To listen to a podcast with Chris and Keith just click here)

Click here for the full recipe and some truly adorable photos…

RED DEVIL’S FOOD CAKE

I should add a caveat: Because this is an old recipe, it is not very specific in the instructions, as I’m sure the person who wrote it down knew how to make it and took for granted certain details… So I have added some specifics in brackets. Keith has also added some tips at the end. If you have some helpful tips after making this cake, please share!

2 cups sifted flour
1/2 cup cocoa
1 1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup shortening
3 eggs, [separated]
1 teaspoon [baking] soda
1 tablespoon hot water
1 cup water
1 teaspoon vanilla

[Butter and flour two 8" pans or line with parchment paper.] Sift flour and cocoa together, cream sugar and shortening. Add egg yolks and beat well. Dissolve soda in 1 tablespoon hot water, mix and add beaten egg whites. Bake at 375-350 degrees. [I’d say try it at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, but you might want to start checking on your layers around 25 minutes, with a toothpick in the center for doneness. If you can see it’s still liquid, no need to test]

CHOCOLATE FROSTING
2 tablespoons spry (this means shortening)
1 tablespoon butter
2 ounces chocolate
5 tablespoons hot milk
1 1/2 cups sifted confectioner’s sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt

Melt spry (shortening) butter & chocolate together over hot water. Pour hot milk over sugar & stir until sugar is dissolved. Add vanilla & salt. Add chocolate mixture & beat until smooth & thin enough to spread. Makes enough frosting to cover tops and sides of 2 8″ layers

Some tips from Keith:

I would recommend making this cake on a day where you have a bit of extra time. It’s not super quick like a cake mix. It takes probably a good 45 minutes to make, including making the frosting. The frosting was surprisingly not difficult, a double pot can seem intimidating but really the trick is to just keep it on very low heat to prevent the butter from burning. The frosting is super runny and not thick at all when finished, so you need to chill it for a good 1 1/2 to 2 hours…. Also, remember that spry is shortening! When making the frosting, it is sooo helpful to have nonstick or an iron pot to do it in, makes it so much easier and less chance of burning the butter. The pan with the water was just a regular frying pan, but the pot was non-stick.

Why Chris and Keith chose this recipe: We purchased these framed recipes from the lovely NYC shop Hable Construction years and years ago. Here’s what one of them looks like: I think they look amazing. They sit prominently above the stove and I just love the homey handwrittenness of them but I’ll confess we’ve never actually made the recipes… until now!

Recently we got together with our pal Roxy Marj and tried ‘em out. Roxy’s a super talented illustrator that we’ve been so fortunate to work with on some fun projects with this summer. She did some very playful things with the shots.

in the kitchen with

shortening is those tubs or sticks of plain or butter-flavored Crisco you can find in the baking section. aka-hydrogenated oil (baaaad stuff!) Trans-fats. Crisco got a bad rap and started making shortening w/out trans fats, not sure how that tastes/works.

***I make all my grandma’s recipes with butter substituted for the shortening/lard and it always comes out fine. ***

Interesting to see a red devils food cake without food coloring…every recipie I’ve seen has that “red dye #?” stuff in them, and consequently tastes terrible. If trying to avoid shortening, I use just butter for the total amount. That is what was used pre-shortening, (or folks used lard)

Gee…I guess coming from Fred Flare I would have thought that Chris and Keith would have put more effort into making a cake look fun and totally unexpected. HOLY COW, Guys! How fliiippin’ FUN are those cake toppers?!?! Beats the hell out of some airbrushed Little Mermaid, I’ll tell ya’!

As I am an avid baker…I am anxious to try this recipe out :)

Thanks for the kitchen uber-funfest!

Those cake decorations are too cute!! If I don’t have the time/patience to wait for frosting (or ganache) to chill in the fridge for a few hours, I set it in a bowl over an ice water bath, stirring continuously. Should be at the right consistency in minutes.

Barefoot Contessa’s At Home cookbook has the moistest, most delicious basic chocolate cake recipe. I just made it for my birthday party and it was DELICIOUS! Along with 20 of those DIY paper and hi-ball glass lanterns, which lit up the lawn gorgeously. LOVE this blog!

What an ADORABLE cake–I hope you guys are paying this talented illustrator well! I’ve never seen anything so cute. Are you reproducing them in a laminated format or something so they can be reused for all our cake makings? Can I buy this from you? Is she doing more toppers? What a cleaver idea!! I hope she’ll have a full line–especially for the holidays. And yes, the illustrations on the photos are darling. You guys rock!

I want that kind of art on my next birthday cake! I always get my name and “happy birthday” in shaky white letters with some plastic flowers.
Will try this cake, always hunting for the ultimate chocolate cake recipe!

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