THE BEST CHOCOLATE CAKE RECIPE

The Best Chocolate Cake recipe combines cocoa and coffee to create a chocolate lover’s dream. Add your favorite buttercream frosting to make it perfect! Keep reading to find out why coffee, buttermilk, and oil play important roles in this chocolate cake recipe.

THE BEST CHOCOLATE CAKE RECIPE WITH COFFEE

This cake is dark, moist, rich and incredibly decadent. Seriously, it’s the best chocolate cake I’ve ever tasted.

A little bit of coffee blends amazingly well with the cocoa to create the most intense and delicious chocolate cake that you’ll ever taste.

Don’t freak out if you don’t like the taste of coffee. You actually can’t taste it in this cake!

Coffee simply enhances the flavor of chocolate. In this cake, it deepens that rich, chocolatey flavor.

If you are really opposed to using coffee, you can swap it out for water.

You can also use espresso powder – use a teaspoon of espresso powder along with 1 cup of water in place of the 1 cup of coffee.

USE OIL AND BUTTERMILK FOR A MOIST CHOCOLATE CAKE

Buttermilk plays two important roles in making the best chocolate cake.

In addition to adding an ever-so-subtle tang, the acid in the buttermilk helps keep this cake incredibly tender and makes for a moist chocolate cake recipe.

If you don’t have any buttermilk on hand, simply use this buttermilk substitute and you’re golden!

This cake also uses oil instead of butter. While butter provides a lot of flavor in recipes such as 7UP Pound Cake and Homemade Funfetti Cupcakes, oil gives cakes a lovely, light texture.

Since the combo of unsweetened cocoa powder and Dutch-process cocoa give this cake so much chocolatey flavor, we don’t necessarily need the flavor of the butter to compete or overpower the chocolate.

Cocoa can also easily dry out cakes, so using a neutral-flavored oil in combination with the buttermilk makes sure both the chocolate flavor and moist texture of this cake really sing.

HOW MUCH CAKE DOES THIS RECIPE MAKE?

I most often make this recipe into a double-layered cake using two 9-inch cake pans. Occasionally I will bake it into a sheet cake in a 13×9-inch pan.

You can also bake it into chocolate cupcakes, though! You can get anywhere from 24-36 cupcakes, depending on how full you fill the tins. You’ll want to bake the cupcakes for 20-30 minutes.

Ingredients

2 cups sugar
1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
¾ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tablespoons Dutch process cocoa optional
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup strong black coffee
½ cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Instructions

Heat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour two 9-inch round baking pans or one 13x9x2-inch baking pan. Set aside. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment or in a large bowl with an electric mixer, combine the sugar, flour, cocoa(s), baking soda, baking powder and salt. Mix on low until dry ingredients are thoroughly combined.
Add eggs, buttermilk, coffee, oil and vanilla. Beat on medium speed for about two minutes; the batter will be thin.
Pour batter evenly into prepared pans.
Bake in preheated oven for 30 to 35 minutes for round pans, 35 to 40 minutes for rectangular pan or until wooden toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
Cool 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks. Cool completely.
Frost as desired.

BOSCOTS