The Actual Difference Between Chocolate Cake And Devil's Food Cake, Explained

Your sweet tooth is loud, and you find yourself standing in front of a cake display trying to decide which piece to order. While some cake recipes are easy to identify thanks to particular garnishes — red velvet cakes are easy to pick out by color, and a visible topping of coconut and pecans clearly adorns pieces of German chocolate cakes — slices of devil's food cake and chocolate cake can pose more of a challenge. 

Though recipes can change due to a baker's preferences and creative culinary whims, fluffy devil's food cake tends to incorporate plenty of cocoa powder into the batter, plus oil and baking soda. These ingredients aren't always involved when making a chocolate cake, resulting in a baked treat that is lighter, fluffier, and less dense than forkfuls of chocolate cake. To add to the confusion, while devil's food cakes are traditionally topped with chocolate frosting, some, like Ina Garten's Devil's Food Cake recipe, are topped with other flavors like coffee meringue buttercream. Regardless, the taste of devil's food cakes is generally richer and more intense than bites of a chocolate cake. 

Taking a slice out of decadence

Chocolate cakes often include more quantities of butter and milk than recipes to make devil's food cake. Chocolate cakes can be layered and crowned with a variety of toppings, like frosting or glaze, and even chocolate sprinkles. Though they may not be as fudge-like and rich as devil's food cake, chocolate cakes can still be hefty, tender, soft, and drool-inducing. You may also notice a lighter chocolate color in chocolate cakes, as the presence of baking powder in devil's food cakes turns cocoa powder a dark hue as it neutralizes the cocoa's acid.

Keep in mind that there aren't many hard and fast rules when it comes to matters of the kitchen. While chocolate cake recipes tend to include either bittersweet or milk chocolate in the recipes, a baker can easily choose to toss cocoa powder into a chocolate layer cake recipe, while another may add both coffee and melted chocolate into a different version of the recipe to coax out new depths of flavor in a deliciously devilish devil's food cake recipe.

Recommended