Mrs. Lipscomb's Devil's Food Cake

When I was a teenager, one of my projects was creating and organizing a recipe book for my mom. I spent many hours typing up countless recipes, some very old ones handwritten on index cards or others clipped from newspapers and magazines. 

For some reason, I don't think I saved any of the typed files, which was not very smart. However, I'm not sure I'd have much use for recipe documents created in Windows 95 (or possibly 98) saved on a floppy disk at this point either.  

One of the recipes in my mom's book is for devil's food cake. It's actually a recipe my mom's aunt got when she lived and worked for a family in Springfield while studying at Draughon Business College (which no longer exists) in the 1930s.

My grandmother often baked this devil's food cake for family birthdays when I was a kid. In fact, I don't think we ever had regular "chocolate" cake--it was always devil's food. I've made the cake several times over the years, and again when I was home this summer. 

I like that the recipe calls for oil instead of butter, but I'd forgotten that you have to beat the egg whites separately, which is kind of a pain. Nevertheless, it's a super yummy and moist chocolatey cake, which is even better with chocolate frosting.