Homemade Deep'n Delicious Cake

Homemade Deep'N Delicious Cake

This Homemade Deep'n Delicious Cake is a copycat recipe of a beloved Canadian freezer cake... and it's a very accurate replica, at that!

We’re less than a week away from Thanksgiving, and it’s a bit of a weird one. Even aside from the whole ~situation~ going on right now, there’s... well, everything else.

2 weeks ago, “Moving Day!!” is marked on our calendar. It was our originally scheduled moving date - supposed to be after my husband would (per the initial plan!) finish his degree in the US, and we’d move to Canada.

2016 changed those plans, for obvious reasons. I’d never been happy in the USA, and had spent a decade warning friends and family about what was coming. Well, trying to, anyway - my observations were usually written off as being “dramatic”, at best.

2016 was the start of people finally seeing what I was seeing, but it also escalated the things that made living in the USA stressful for me. So, we stepped up our plans and got out in 2018.

Somehow, I’d managed to miss the fact that we’d had the original moving date on the calendar, so it remained this whole time, just popping up as a random reminder last month.

It’s kind of breathtaking. I can’t imagine having been in Minneapolis this past 7 months. I can’t imagine trying to pack and sell a house during the unrest and pandemic, and I honestly don’t even know what the immigration situation would have been.

Would we have sold the house, packed up the RV, and seen my husband turned back at the border? I don’t know. It’s a sobering thought, especially going into the Thanksgiving long weekend.

Last night was the season premiere of both This Hour Has 22 Minutes, and Baroness Von Sketch. After a LONG summer, both were straight up medicinal - and got me thinking about how thankful I am to be home. I really, REALLY missed the CBC while I was away.

Anyway, when I woke up this morning, my thoughts were with Canadians still living in the US. While I’m super thankful to be home, I worry for those still in the US.

Some are in the same situation I was - Married to an American and in the process of moving home - while many others are considering that possibility. For some, moving home is a logistical impossibility, and they’ll be remaining in the USA.

I just look at how life has been since moving home - especially what with the move literally saving my life at this point - and ... I can’t even imagine.

Not to get super dark here, just letting my empathy run wild a bit. Anyway.

I woke up this morning and decided to wrote this post as a Thanksgiving gift to Canadians living in the US right now.

Canadian Comfort Food

As you may remember, I wrote “More Than Poutine: Favourite Foods from My Home and Native Land” when I was still living in the USA, and my experience living in the US was a HUGE contributor to its themes, and very existence.

Many of the recipes in the book are recipes I created years before ever considering writing cookbooks at all, much less *that* cookbook.

They were recipes that I had created - sometimes wholly from memory, sometimes with the source material right on hand, after a trip home - as a comfort thing. Survival skills! I was very homesick, very stressed out... so comfort food from home was *needed* - even when not readily available.

More Than Poutine was not only a love letter to my homeland on its birthday, it partially a record of around 10 years of my culinary coping methods, AND a gift to Canadians still living in the US.

Deep’N Delicious Cake was one of those comfort foods that I craved, and I wasn’t alone in that - it was a HUGELY popular request from expat Canadians, as I was developing More Than Poutine.

It was a weird craving, for me - it’s not a particularly good cake, even though it’s AMAZING as a comfort food.

As a former professional cake artist - known specifically for great tasting cakes! - and someone who’d literally written a book about making fabulous cakes - Evil Cake Overlord - Deep’N Delicious Cake is just an odd thing for ME to crave, you know?

Deep’N Delicious Cake

For those not “in the know”, Deep’N Delicious Cake is an iconic Canadian convenience food that’s been around FOREVER. Definitely since I was a kid - so at least 30 years.

The format hasn’t changed in that time, either: It’s a small, single layer cake, baked right into the foil pan its sold in. The top is piped with stars of a SUPER smooth and creamy frosting, with sprinkles on top. There’s a clear plastic cover, and you buy it in the freezer section.

Yes, Deep’N Delicious is a FROZEN cake - and you usually serve it right out of the freezer.

It’s actually edible right from the freezer, and goes against every bit of cake advice I’ve ever given. In particular, “cold cake is dry cake”, and that you should always let cake come to room temp before serving it.

I’m usually referring to refrigerated cake there, BTW - frozen usually isn’t even on my mental radar when talking about “cold cake”.

Homemade Deep’N Delicious Cake

The fun in trying to make an ACCURATE homemade version of Deep N’Delicious cake came from trying to replicate a cake and frosting that doesn't really attain a "frozen" texture when frozen.

It's actually kind of horrifying when you start really thinking about it, the crimes against cake that may have been committed to make the source material work!

I promised to not include anything TOO weird, hoping I wouldn't have to resort to creating a complete Frankencake.

In the end, the cake required swapping oil in for butter (butter tastes better, but affects the frozen texture!), and the decision to use something other than frosting as the frosting.

I’ll be honest, trying to figure out the “frosting” was a tough one, because I was focused on thinking of it as frosting. It wasn’t an American Buttercream, it wasn’t a Swiss Meringue Buttercream.

Based on the texture, there definitely wasn’t much/any butter at all, but it also didn’t seem to be shortening based.

My "eureka" moment came as I was sorting through recipes to post to the blog, coming across my Earl Grey Pie as a possibility. While it’s a custard recipe, it made me think - it was originally going to be based on a French Silk pie.

And that was the key - Deep N’ Delicious frosting wasn’t a frosting! It was French Silk Pie filling!

Some Tips for Making Deep’N Delicious “Frosting”

When making the Deep N’ Delicious Cake "frosting", it's best to keep everything as cold as possible.

If you can chill the bowl and whisk attachment for your stand mixer before making this, it works better.

I like to put the eggs in the freezer for a few minutes before using, also.

Be sure to use pasteurized eggs, as they are not cooked in this recipe!

This recipe is one of many fantastic Canadian recipes in my cookbook, "More Than Poutine: Favourite Foods from my Home and Native Land”. "More than Poutine" is a Canadian cookbook like no other - written by a Canadian living away, it includes both traditional home cooking recipes, as well as accurate homemade versions of many of the snacks, sauces, convenience foods, and other food items that are hard to come by outside of Canada!

Order your copy here on this site, through Amazon, or through any major bookseller!

Now, on to that Homemade Deep'N Delicious Cake Recipe!

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4.85 from 33 votes

Homemade Deep'n Delicious Cake

This Homemade Deep'n Delicious Cake is a copycat recipe of a beloved Canadian freezer cake... and it's a very accurate replica, at that!

Prep Time45 minutes mins

Cook Time30 minutes mins

Chilling Time1 hour hr

Total Time2 hours hrs 15 minutes mins

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: Canadian

Servings: 8 - one 9 x 13" pan

Calories: 905kcal

Author: Marie Porter

Equipment

• 9 x 13 Baking Dish
• Cake Decorating Set (Optional)
• Frosting Bags

Ingredients

Chocolate Cake

• 2 cups Cake flour
• ⅓ cup Cocoa powder
• 1 ½ cups Granulated Sugar
• 4 teaspoon Baking powder
• 1 teaspoon Salt
• 3 ½ oz Instant vanilla pudding mix
• 4 Large eggs
• 1 cup Water
• ½ cup Vegetable Oil
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla extract

“Frosting”

• 4 oz Unsweetened baking chocolate squares
• 1 cup Butter room temperature
• 1 ¼ cups Granulated sugar
• 1 tablespoon Cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla extract
• 4 Large pasteurized eggs
• Chocolate Sprinkles optional

Instructions

Chocolate Cake:

• Preheat oven to 350 F (180 C). Liberally grease a 9 x 13" cake pan with vegetable shortening, and/or spray with baking spray.
• Combine flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking powder, salt, and pudding mix in a large mixing bowl.
• Add in eggs and water, beating until smooth. Carefully add vegetable oil and vanilla to the mix, mixing on medium speed until smooth. Pour batter into prepared cake pan.
• Bake until golden and knife inserted into center of batter comes out clean and cake springs back - about 25-30 minutes.
• Allow to cool to cool to room temperature - in the pan - then wrap tightly with plastic wrap.
• Allow cake to sit overnight, making frosting the following day:

“Frosting”

• Melt baking chocolate: I like to do so in a glass bowl in the microwave, but doing so on the stove top over low heat is another option.
• Either way, melt until smooth, remove from heat, and allow to cool to almost room temperature - but not solidifying.
• In the meantime, beat together butter and sugar in a stand mixer - or with an electric mixer - until pale and fluffy. Add cocoa powder and vanilla, beat on low until blended.
• Add cooled chocolate, beat once more until completely blended in.
• Take one egg from the fridge or freezer, crack it into the mix, and beat until mixed in. Turn speed up to medium-high, and beat for 4-5 minutes.
• Repeat with remaining eggs - 4-5 minutes apart. Leave eggs chilling while waiting to add them. Once final egg has been beaten for 4-5 minutes, cover bowl with plastic wrap, chill for at least one hour.
• Spoon a small amount of frosting into a pastry bag fitted with a star attachment, pipe stars onto cooled cake.
• Refill bag with small amounts of frosting as you go - having too much in the bag at one time will have the frosting being warmed from your hands.
• If frosting is/becomes too runny to pipe, return to fridge to cool / firm up for a bit.
• Once top of cake is covered in piped stars, scatter chocolate sprinkles on top (if desired), cover, and freeze.
• Slice and serve straight out of the freezer, or allow slices to thaw slightly before serving.

Notes

For a Gluten-Free Deep'N Delicious Cake:

Mix together 1 ¼ cup light buckwheat flour, ¼ cup sorghum flour, ¼ cup coconut flour, and ¾ teaspoon xanthan
gum. Use in place of cake flour

Nutrition

Calories: 905kcal | Carbohydrates: 113g | Protein: 12g | Fat: 50g | Saturated Fat: 32g | Cholesterol: 225mg | Sodium: 885mg | Potassium: 281mg | Fiber: 5g | Sugar: 81g | Vitamin A: 947IU | Calcium: 190mg | Iron: 4mg

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