Devil's Food

Part 1. Mix together one cup of brown sugar, one cup of shaved chocolate, one cup of sweet milk. Put over the fire and let come to a boil, stirring all the while. When thick, take from stove and set to cool.

Part 2. Rub to a cream one cup of brown sugar and one-half cup of butter. Add yolks of three eggs and beat all very light; then one-half cup of sweet milk, two cups of flour, flavor with vanilla, and two teaspoonfuls of baking powder. Beat whites light and add also a pinch of salt. Mix with Part 1 in jelly tins. Put white icing between layers.

This recipe for Devil's Food was taken right out of the Ladies' Home Cook Book 1898. Below are notes from our kitchen.

Notes:
• For shaved chocolate use unsweetened baking chocolate. You can use a potato peeler to shave it. It dissolved and melted very readily in the milk. For the sweet milk, (very fresh) use canned milk. As it cooked down there came a time when it became noticeably thicker at which time set off
• Beat the whites to almost a meringue consistency before adding to the butter and sugar.
• After adding the milk but before adding the flour in part 2, make sure to mix the milk into the batter. If you add the milk without mixing in and them pour in the flour you'll end up with lumps of flour that will never properly blend with the other ingredients.
• Add part 1 to part 2 after part 2 is prepared. This gave part 1 some time to cool but not completely.
• For the jelly tins use cake pans.
• Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes.