The ultimate chocolate cake: moist, rich and not too sweet. Covered in luscious ganache. Quick to make and gone too soon.
Everyone needs a chocolate cake in their repertoire. And this is the only chocolate cake recipe you’ll need. It features two layers, sandwiched together and smothered with a silky ganache.
It ticks all the boxes:
- really easy to make – no stand mixer required.
- quick – 30 minutes to prepare, 30 minutes to bake. And that prep time includes making and applying ganache! You can be 1 hour away from chocolate heaven.
- incredibly moist
- just the right amount of sweet
- coffee in the cake and ganache makes the chocolate flavour sing. It doesn't make it taste overwhelmingly coffee-flavoured.
- easy to frost – no need to trim cakes, no crumb coat required
- keeps really well without drying out, up to 5 days.
- smells incredible!
- a real crowd-pleaser. Everyone loves chocolate cake (unless you’re my husband. Weird.)
🥘 Ingredients
Cocoa Powder – you can use either natural or Dutch-process cocoa powder for this recipe. Make sure it’s unsweetened. Note: cacao powder is something different.
Vegetable Oil – use a neutral-flavoured oil, such as sunflower or rice bran. Olive oil would be a bit much here. Using oil rather than butter makes this chocolate cake so easy to make. There's no need to soften butter, or cream butter with sugar. The oil makes for a very moist cake too.
Freshly Brewed Coffee – this is basically coffee-flavoured liquid. ou could make it using instant granules or barista-brewed from your local café. You can use decaffeinated (my coffee of choice). Keep it sugar and milk-free. It doesn’t need to be super-strong, think long black rather than espresso.
NB: even if you use decaf coffee, there's a decent hit of stimulants in chocolate and cocoa powder. There's theobromine and caffeine in cocoa. I limit my kids to a smaller slice of this if it's the evening. Of course this is probably a bit reason why people love chocolate cake!
Dark Chocolate – for an intense chocolate hit, without the extra sugar. 70% cocoa solids is perfect. Substitute with the same amount of milk chocolate if you prefer.
Sea Salt – measured by weight rather than volume here means that we don’t need to worry how fine or coarse it is. A decent amount intensifies all the flavours.
Double/Whipping/Thickened/Heavy Cream – so many different names, depending on the region! You’re looking for cream with a high fat content, which helps create a smooth and rich texture in the ganache.
Instant Coffee – we add a small amount of coffee granules dissolved in water to the frosting. This way we get intense coffee flavour without diluting the frosting.
🔪 Instructions
Making the cakes
Combining ingredients is easier when they're at room temperature. Get your buttermilk and eggs out of the fridge before you start. It’s not a deal-breaker if you forget though 😉
Why dust the pans with cocoa?
Powder helps prevent the cakes from sticking. Cocoa powder makes sense - the cake already contains this and it won’t be visible on the outside like flour would be. We liberally grease the pans with softened butter (using your fingers is the easiest way to do this). Line the base of the pans with baking paper. Tip in about a tablespoon of cocoa powder and, holding over the sink. swirl around to coat the sides. Tap the pan and shake excess cocoa powder into the second tin. Repeat, tipping the excess away.
Two bowls and no stand mixer
The batter for this cake is so wet, it’s more trouble than it’s worth to use a stand mixer. It’s far easier to incorporate the ingredients by simply using a silicone spatula.
We sift the dry ingredients into a large bowl and the wet ingredients into a smaller bowl. And combine. That’s it! A silicone spatula is handy for making sure the bowl is scraped clean. You might have a few lumps in the batter. This is fine. Minimal handling of the batter will help produce a very soft and tender cake.
Making the ganache
Melt chocolate in hot cream
Chocolate can be challenging to work with. It's sensitive to temperature and humidity. Without care, it can ‘seize’ (turn into a grainy, thick mass). It doesn’t like having watery ingredients added to it. For example, if you add the dissolved coffee granules to melted chocolate first, it will seize. Chocolate doesn't seize when added to hot cream because cream is a fat-based liquid. Chocolate is mostly cocoa solids and cocoa butter, which are also fats. When you add chocolate to hot cream, the cocoa butter in the chocolate melts. This will then combine with the cream smoothly. It’s important we melt the chocolate in hot cream before we add the other ingredients. This makes a super-smooth and creamy ganache.
No need for a crumb coat
If you’re wondering what a crumb coat is, it doesn’t really matter because we don’t need to know! 😆 A crumb coat is when we apply a thin layer of frosting over a cake to secure any loose crumbs and stick them down. When we use a crumb coat, we chill the cake for a short while to set the frosting. Then the ‘proper’ frosting layer is applied. It will be crumb-free and smooth, for a professional finish. Anyway, no need. This cake is so moist, it’s not crumbly. Besides, the cake is dark brown and so is the ganache. You can be a bit ‘rough and ready’ with applying the ganache and it will still look amazing!
So easy to frost
Chill the ganache before using. You melt chocolate in hot cream to make ganache. This means that the ganache will be warm and quite runny when it’s first made. About 45 minutes in the fridge (or longer) will be fine. Dollop about a quarter of the ganache on top of one of the cakes. Spread out using an offset spatula. Sandwich the cakes together. Tip the rest of the ganache on the cakes. Use the offset spatula to ease it to the edges, all the way down the sides and smoothly round. It’s a doddle.
My favourite types of cake are dense, soft and rich. They’re never dry or crumbly. This is handy because moist cakes are easy to make too! There’s usually no creaming of butter and sugar involved. If this is the type of cake you love too, check out my ginger loaf cake.
And if you’ve got this far through reading the recipe, you probably also really love chocolate. My dark-chocolate brownies are for true chocolate fans. They have three versions of chocolate – cocoa powder, melted chocolate and chocolate chunks. Not for the faint-hearted!
I've adapted this chocolate cake recipe slightly from Ina Garten’s recipe.
I’ve reduced the amount of sugar. I've swapped the butter in the frosting for cream, which gives an (unsurprising!) creamier and smoother result. This is why I've called it a ganache, rather than a frosting.
📖 Recipe
Equipment
- Two cake pans, 20cm diameter, 4cm deep
Ingredients
Cake
- butter (for greasing pans)
- ½ tablespoon cocoa powder (for dusting pans)
- 240 ml freshly brewed coffee
- 210 g plain/all purpose flour
- 350 g caster sugar
- 75 g cocoa powder
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- teaspoon baking powder
- 6 g salt
- 120 g vegetable oil
- 2 eggs
- teaspoon pure vanilla extract/paste
- 240 g buttermilk
Ganache
- 170 g chocolate 70% cocoa
- 230 g double/whipping/thickened/heavy cream
- Teaspoon pure vanilla extract/paste
- Pinch salt
- 5 g instant coffee granules
- 125 g pure icing sugar
Instructions
Cake
- Preheat Oven – to 170°C (fan-forced)
- Coffee – prepare your coffee your preferred way and allow to cool.240 ml freshly brewed coffee
- Prepare Pans – generously butter the cake pans (using your fingers is the easiest way to do this). Line the base of the pans with baking paper and line the sides with a thin layer of cocoa powder. Tip in about a tablespoon of cocoa powder and, holding over the sink. swirl around to coat the sides. Tap the pan and shake excess cocoa powder into the second tin. Repeat, tipping the excess away.butter½ tablespoon cocoa powder
- Dry Ingredients - sift the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl big enough to take all the ingredients.210 g plain/all purpose flour350 g caster sugar75 g cocoa powder2 teaspoons baking sodateaspoon baking powder6 g salt
- Wet Ingredients – combine the oil, eggs, vanilla and buttermilk in a bowl and whisk (by hand is fine). Add the cooled coffee liquid.120 g vegetable oil2 eggs240 g buttermilkTeaspoon pure vanilla extract/paste
- Combine Wet & Dry – tip the wet ingredients over the dry and use a silicone spatula to combine. Use a combination of figure of 8 movements and scraping the bottom and sides of the bowl. Some lumps are fine.
- Divide Batter – pour the batter evenly between the two cake pans. It will be very fluid. Gently knock out any bubbles by lifting then gently banging the tins back down on a work surface. Transfer the pans to the oven on the same rack.
- Bake – for around 35 minutes, rotating the tins halfway through. A cake tester/toothpick inserted in the centre of the cake will come out slightly wet with moist crumbs, but not covered in clumps of wet batter. Return to the oven and retest after another five minutes if still undercooked in the centre. The cakes will look a bit sunken; this is fine. You won't be able to rely on sight; the cakes are dark-coloured to start with.
- Cool- in the pans for at least 30 minutes. The cakes may sink a little further and they’ll shrink away from the sides of the pan. Run a butter knife around the outside and gently turn out onto a cooling rack to cool completely. Don’t put your hand on the top of the cake when doing this, the cake is very soft and may tear. Peel the baking paper off very carefully, especially if it went up the sides slightly.
Ganache
- Chocolate & Cream – roughly chop the chocolate. Gently heat the cream over medium heat on the stovetop until steaming hot (but not boiling). You can heat in the microwave if you prefer. Add the chocolate, vanilla and salt. Leave to sit for a couple of minutes before stirring until fully melted. Stir occasionally until the chocolate is fully melted.teaspoon pure vanilla extract/paste170 g chocolate230 g double/whipping/thickened/heavy creamPinch salt
- Coffee – in a small bowl, fully dissolve the coffee in 2 teaspoons boiling water.5 g instant coffee granules
- Icing Sugar- sift the icing sugar. Add it to the chocolate cream with the dissolved coffee. Mix until fully combined.125 g pure icing sugar
- Chill - – chill the ganache for at least 45 minutes before using to allow it to firm up. If you’re in a hurry, you can make and chill the ganache while the cakes are baking and cooling. If you're making the ganache in advance, allow it to sit at room temperature after chilling until it's spreadable consistency before using it on the cake.
- Assemble Cake – place one of the cakes on the plate you want to serve it on. Dollop about a quarter of the ganache in the centre and use an offset spatula to spread it out evenly. Place the second cake on top. Dollop the rest of the ganache on the top and work it outwards and down the sides. You can leave it as smooth or rustic as you like.
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