Every cake lover and baking enthusiast needs a decadent chocolate cake recipe in their arsenal and I’m sharing mine today. Tender and soft chocolate layers with a rich chocolate buttercream frosting.
Chocolate cake is one of my all time favourite cake and I enjoy having a slice with some chilled milk.
This recipe is very easy to follow and I even put the measurements in cup measures. However, I show how to properly measure flour with a cup. This involves, spooning the flour into the cup then leveling it. I also used a stand mixer to make this cake but I’ve done it before with an electric hand whisk and also before with a mwiko and it still worked well.
You will also notice that the recipe starts with mixing the cocoa powder with boiling hot water. The hot water blooms the cocoa powder yielding the chocolate taste that we all love. I also added some instant coffee to give the chocolate flavour some kick.
The beautiful thing about this rich chocolate cake recipe, it can be adapted to get different variants. Addition of orange zest to the mix gives you chocolate orange, perhaps some peppermint essence for a chocolate mint or even some peanut butter to get a chocolate peanut butter cake. As you can see, limitless options.
The recipe yields about a kilo of cake and thus the ideal cake tin size to use is either a 7 inch round tin or 8 inch tin, use three tins for the former and two for the latter.
For the frosting, I used chocolate buttercream, however dark chocolate ganache can work too.
And that’s how you make a rich chocolate cake.
Rich Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Buttercream
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup cocoa powder
- 1/2 teaspoon instant coffee optional
- 1 cup boiling hot water
- 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
- 113 grams 1/2 cup unsalted butter or margarine
- 2 large whole eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
Chocolate Buttercream
- 375 grams unsalted butter at room temperature
- 420 grams icing sugar
- 30 grams cocoa powder
- pinch of salt
- 2 tablespoons milk optional
Instructions
- Preheat oven at 180 degrees C.
- In a bowl or jug mix cocoa powder, instant coffee if using and boiling hot water. Stir and set aside.
- Mix flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt and set aside.
- Using a stand mixer or electric hand whisk or wooden spoon cream sugar and unsalted butter or margarine until pale in colour about 3 – 5 minutes depending on tool used.
- Mix in egg one at a time and add vanilla essence.
- Add a third of the flour mixture and combine, then half of the cocoa mixture. Repeat the procedure and finish with the last third of the flour mixture.
- Mix until just incorporated.
- Prepare cake tins by greasing with a little butter or margarine then lightly dusting with flour or lining with some parchment paper.
- Divide the cake batter evenly between prepared three 7 inch round tins or two 8 inch round tins.
- Level the batter with the back of a spoon and bake in the pre heated oven for 25 to 30 minutes or until when the cake is gently pressed at the centre it springs back.
- Allow the cakes to cool completely before frosting.
- For the buttercream, in a mixer or using a whisk, cream unsalted butter until pale in colour then add icing sugar, cocoa powder and salt.
- Mix until creamy, to lighten add a tablespoon or two of milk.
- Once cakes are cooled, remove from tins, level any domed cakes with a serrated knife and frost the cake with the chocolate buttercream.
- Additionally, you can fill the layers with dark chocolate ganache to take it to the next level.
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