Devil’s Food Cake with Seven-Minute Frosting

Happy first heavenly birthday to my mom. She would have been 83 today. I wish I could talk to her one more time. I’ve been thinking a lot about her lately. Mom was the one behind our family traditions and she always made holidays and birthdays special. I’ve said before that many of my kitchen memories and favorite foods come from my childhood. My mom stopped baking years ago … maybe that’s why I took it over. I grew up with a cake on the table after dinner more nights than not. Today in memory of my mom, I made a simple two-layer Devil’s Food cake with her recipe for fluffy 7-minute frosting.

Yes, I cut into it and ate a slice immediately upon frosting. Happy birthday Mom.

Okay, I made my cake from scratch not from a box. But this got me curious about cake mixes. I looked it up and discovered that the cake mix was invented in the 1930s. Betty Crocker began selling cake mixes in 1947. The next year, Pillsbury launched the first-ever chocolate cake mix. Duncan Hines debuted its first two cake mixes in 1951. One of those flavors was Devil’s Food. It seems that my mom was loyal to a specific brand but I can’t really remember. She probably bought whichever one was on sale. Mom definitely grew up in the cake-mix days and was the best mom around at whipping up cakes!

A little history about cake mixes

According to “The History of Boxed Cake Mix”, cake mixes really took off after World War II but in the mid-1950s boxed cake mix sales began to flatten. A psychologist and marketing specialist was hired to survey housewives and discovered that women “ felt guilty about not doing more” (imagine that). So good old advertising was used to encourage women to make the cakes their own with frosting and decorating. In her book Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America (2005), food historian Laura Shapiro said, “This decorating obsession sold the idea that this way, you're making the cake yours.”

So not much has changed, it’s still about making the cake your own.

Devil’s food cake

As kids, we probably thought our mom was the only mom who made cakes like she did! And she may have been. One of her signatures was Devil’s Food with seven-minute icing. I remember mom cooking the seven-minute icing over her double boiler, beating it with a hand mixer until it turned into a gorgeous glossy white mixture. She’d plop big spoonfuls on top the cake, spread it all over, and then the magic happened. She’d take a butter knife and make little peaks all over the top of the cake. Watching this process as a child was mesmerizing. I can still picture her doing this. (I do remember the frosting would weep after a day or so, probably depending on the time of year.)

I used the chocolate devil’s food cake recipe (page 125) from Zoë Bakes Cakes. Her recpe is pictured baked in a 9”x4” Pullman loaf pan. But it also works in two 8” round cake pans, which only takes 30 minutes to bake. Her recipe has coffee in it (which you can’t taste, it just makes it that much more flavorful and moister). Sure mom would not have liked the idea of coffee in her cake. Zoe adds rum, which I replaced with more hot coffee. I used Ghiradelli Dutch process cocoa. My cakes did not turn out even, but nothing a serrated knife couldn’t fix. Just trim any dome or unevenness and you’ll cover with frosting anyhow!

Seven-minute frosting

When it came to making the seven-minute icing, I also went down a bit of a rabbit hole. I did find my mom’s recipe that was called “Fluffy 7-minute frosting” in an old binder where I’d captured a bunch of her recipes shortly after moving away from home.

Fluffy 7-minute frosting. Just look at her!

Mom’s Fluffy 7-minute Frosting

Frosts two 8’ or 9” layers

Combine ¾ cup sugar, ¼ cup light corn syrup, 2 egg whites, 2 Tablespoons water, ¼ tsp salt and ¼ tsp cream of tartar in top of double boiler. Cook over boiling water, beating constantly until mixture stands in peaks. Remove from heat. Add 1 tsp vanilla. Beat until spreadable.

The recipe doesn’t say “cook 7 minutes” but that seems implied!

Further sleuthing revealed the seven-minute frosting recipe in my 1965 Better Homes & Garden cookbook. The same recipe is printed in the trusty red and white checked BH&G cookbook I got in the late 1980s. However, my newer pink BH&G cookbook calls the same recipe “Meringue Frosting.” At the end of the day, seven-minute frosting is a Swiss meringue – a combo of egg whites and sugar cooked over water and whipped into a glossy meringue.

A page from my 1965 copy of Better Homes & Garden cookbook.

All of these recipes call for 2 teaspoons light corn syrup or ¼ teaspoon cream of tartar. Not both. Interestingly, my mom’s recipe asks for both. But her’s has less granulated sugar. Hmm. For nostalgic reasons, I decided to make my mom’s version.

As a frosted my cake, I thought about my mom. There is something therapeutic about making each little peak of frosting. However, mine didn’ look as good as Mom’s! I either didn’t work as fast or it cooked a bit too long so wasn’t as easy to work with. Or maybe hers was simply better because she’s the Mom.

I tried to mimic the curlicues that my mom would make.

The icing on the cake

That would be my mom’s cake container. It was shiny chrome/metal with an etched glass plate. There are no markings on it, but I think this is similar (and shinier than my mom’s). How we loved that cake container growing up. As adults, we’d come home and go into the pantry to lift the lid to see if there was a cake or other baked good hidden in there. The sound of lifting the lid is engrained in my memory. I now have that cake container, so it was fitting to use it for the first time today.

My mom’s cake container! I think I need to figure out how to shine it up!

Happy birthday mom

Here’s to you mom. I think about you every day. I have wanted to call you countless times over the past six months. It’s silly the things we tell our mom or only our mom’s care about. I would have told you that my new induction stovetop stopped working. That who knew my hydrangeas would burn from “too much sun” living on the Oregon coast. How big my rose bush has grown. That I love you and miss you. I thought of you when I bought some peaches at the farmer’s market a couple days ago. Wish we could share a bowl of peaches over vanilla ice cream.

 Happy birthday Mom. xoxo