The Ultimate Chocolate Cake Recipe

This is the only chocolate cake recipe you’ll ever need!

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I may be a messy baker, but at least I know how to make a mean chocolate cake. It’s cake time. We’ll start by making our cake batter, which begins with some espresso powder and some Dutch cocoa powder, which has a smoother and deeper flavor than natural cocoa powder. Now, to get as much of that chocolatey flavor as possible, we’re going to do what’s called blooming these powders by pouring over some hot water and giving it a quick whisk. Make sure there are no clumps. The reason we’re using some espresso powder here is because coffee, believe it or not, enhances the flavor of chocolate. So, it’s going to give us a more chocolatey chocolate cake. Already, without even doing much yet, this gives off the smell of warm, hot, fresh, super chocolatey brownies. Now, to this, we’ll add in some sour cream. Sour cream is what’s going to make our cake super moist and tender. Then, some oil, vanilla extract, and once again, we’ll give that a whisk. Wow, look how silky smooth that is. Once that’s fully mixed, we will add in three whole eggs. There’s one. Here’s two. And three. And one more time, whisk it up. I find it helpful while I’m doing this to also have on hand a rubber spatula so I can constantly scrape down the sides of my bowl and make sure everything is fully mixed because it’s never fun to spend a bunch of time mixing something and then you find clumps at the bottom that somehow never got mixed in. Now, set that aside. And into the bowl of a stand mixer, we’ll add some cake flour, some brown sugar. Fun fact, brown sugar is just regular sugar with a little molasses in there. I didn’t know that until like 5 years ago. some regular white sugar, a sprinkle of baking powder, a sprinkle of baking soda, and some salt. Give this a quick whisk until things are evenly mixed together. You’ll probably be fine if there’s still a couple little clumps, but do your best to break it all apart since that’ll give you the smoothest and silkiest chocolate cake. Then add in your wet ingredients. It’s a very satisfying pour. Make sure you scrape down that bowl to get everything out of there. Look at all the little air bubbles popping up. And now, with a paddle attachment and not a whisk attachment, mix it on low to fully combine. Keep that rubber spatula handy because in just a moment, I’m going to turn this off and scrape down the sides of my bowl. Even dig to the bottom to make sure nothing’s stuck down there. And I’ll continue mixing. Once you feel that it’s fully combined, scrape everything off the paddle attachment. We cannot let any of this delicious Oh, looks like I need to go fishing. This is not how you make chocolate cake. Our cake batter is done. To bake, I’ve lined a few cake pans with parchment paper, all of which I am then going to spray with cooking spray to make sure that nothing sticks. Make sure you really look around and hit every single corner of your cake pants. And now I’m going to divide this batter evenly between my three different pans. First, I’ll do this one. Then I’ll jump over here. So much fun pouring any kind of cake batter, watching it fall. And finally over to this last one here. If you really want to be precise and have the most perfect layered chocolate cake, then you can certainly weigh these out and measure it so that they’re all completely even. But I’m just going to eyeball it and do the best I possibly can. Once again, scrape that bowl. Get everything out of there. Don’t forget this is all going to turn into delicious cake. Every drop counts. Once you’ve measured them all out evenly, go ahead and drop them a couple times onto the counter from about this height to remove all the air bubbles. If you watch this one in slow motion, you’ll see how many air bubbles we’re getting rid of. It’s just going to make for a more consistent bite. These will bake for about 20 to 25 minutes depending on your oven. While our cakes are baking, we will move on to the frosting. This frosting is something that I’m very excited about. We’ll start by rough chopping up some chocolate. We want to chop it up into small enough pieces that it’s going to melt down easily in our double boiler. So, it doesn’t have to be too small, but just know that the bigger it is, the longer it’s going to take to melt down. To melt our chocolate, I’ve set up a double boiler. If you don’t know what that is, it’s simply a pot with a bit of water on the bottom and then a heat proof bowl that fits right in over that pot. This is a great way to melt chocolate without the chocolate burning. To this bowl, I’ll add in my chopped up chocolate. Then, some honey. I really love using honey and maple syrup in cakes and baked goods. And finally, a splash of heavy cream. Looks like my cake timer is going off, so I’ll rest those off to the side to let them cool while we finish everything else. The key with a double boiler is to stir constantly. That’s because if you’re using a double boiler, it probably means that whatever you’re trying to melt is very sensitive to heat. So, if you don’t stir constantly, it could still burn. What’s really fun about this frosting recipe is that it’s the perfect hybrid, the perfect combination between a classic fluffy buttercream frosting and a silky smooth chocolate ganache. The ginache being something kind of similar to what we’ve made right here so far. When that chocolate is perfectly shiny, smooth, and melted, I’ll turn off the heat and move that bowl off to the side. While we let that melted chocolate mixture cool, I’m going to add back into my stand mixer some butter. And then on with our paddle attachment, we will mix to get a nice even consistency. Through a strainer, I’m going to add some powdered sugar, which I’m going to sift to keep our cake nice and silky smooth. Ideally, don’t sift all over your cutting board. Just sift into the bowl. I’m just lifting it up higher so I can show you really cool slow motion sifting shots. Isn’t that worth getting a little powdered sugar all over my cutting board? And now we’ll do the same thing with some cocoa powder. I know we already added cocoa powder into our actual cake batter, so this is just going to give even more of a chocolatey flavor. And now, same thing again, I’ll shake it through so it’s all sifted. Last, we’ll add a little pinch of salt and then add back on our paddle attachment where I’m going to beat this once again on low. Once our melted chocolate has cooled, I’m going to go very low speed on my mixer to start and start drizzling in that chocolate. What you’re watching right now is the best chocolate frosting you are ever going to taste. Once it’s all in, I’ll crank up the speed on my mixer because we want everything to fully combine so it’s a nice even smooth mixture. As I’ve continued to do throughout the day, I’m going to open this up for a second and just scrape down the edges of my bowl. This is a very important time to make sure everything’s fully mixed cuz we don’t want a clumpy uneven frosting. But you can already see it shaping up here and it’s going to be amazing. And just like that, my kitchen’s a mess. I’m a mess. But importantly, I got frosting. When I was younger, this is about the time when I would have gone like this and my grandma would have smacked me across the back of my head. But it was worth it. Even though there’s no cake under this frosting yet, you can already just imagine spreading this out over the top of it. Even without the taste, it’s just so beautiful and so much fun to work with. Once I’ve scraped all my frosting, it’ll go in the fridge to firm up a bit until we’re ready to frost our cake. While our frosting cools, I’m going to grab all of my cooled off cakes. They’re still a little warm, but by the time we’re stacking them up, they should be cool enough. What I’m going to do is grab a baking sheet that I’ve lined with some plastic wrap, and I’m going to give this a quick spray with some cooking spray, then put it upside down over my cake, and in one swift motion, I’ll flip. Voila. Peel this off. We don’t need this anymore. And now grab a wire rack and flip that over the cake. And one more time, we’ll flip again. Ooh, there we go. That’s just an easy way to transfer our cake over to these wire racks. I’ll do the same thing with my other cakes. These smell kind of like a combination between a cake and the best brownie you’ve ever had, which is very exciting. The key to doing all this, by the way, is just confidence. You have to do nice quick flips, but it’s not very difficult. This looks great. Once we’ve gotten all of our cake parts out, we just have to give them each a quick little haircut. That’s just to make them all flat on both the top and the bottom so that they’ll stack up easily on our cake. So get down low and try to find that perfect line across that you’ll need to cut. And then super focused just back and forth. Trim off as much cake as you need. That should be perfect. Let’s take this off. I need to trim a little bit more on this one. And don’t worry, this is not going to go to waste. Same thing with the other two cakes. Just get down and sort of use the crust as a guide for your knife when you go back and forth. As long as you are right up against that crust on all sides, you should cut off the perfect amount and get this beautifully flat cake that you’re left with. This one’s good. Now for the final cake. Hand over the top. Really helps to use a serrated knife, by the way. It cuts much better than a regular knife because we’re sort of cutting bread, which is what you’d normally use a serrated knife for. You can also use that knife to help you lift off that top piece. And once again, we’re good. This is it, people. Home stretch. Just have to layer our cake. First, a dollop of frosting in the middle of my cake stand. That’s going to help to stick down the first layer. And then on we go. I’ll try to get this as centered as I possibly can. Then lightly press down. And it’s time to add some of that frosting. Using an offset spatula, I’ll plop down some frosting and begin to start spreading this into a nice first layer on my cake. Depending on how you want your cake to look, whether you want to frost the whole outside or if you just prefer to frost the inside layers, you can change up the amount of frosting that you’re putting down at this stage. I want to frost the entire outside of my cake. So, I’m going to use my layers sparingly here. As you can see, I’m not quite going all the way to the edges with the frosting. And that’s because the weight of all the cakes on top of each other are going to push the rest of that frosting out to the sides. So, this first layer is perfect. Moving on to layer number two. I’ll place down my cake. Give it a little spin to make sure everything is lined up perfectly. Oh, it looks so good. And then same thing again down with some of my frosting to the center of that cake before I spread it out. Try to make sure that you’re applying really purposeful and even pressure as you’re spreading around that frosting. And also make sure that your frosting is not too cold. Cuz what can happen is that as you spread, you can actually start to lift up some of the actual cake itself. And that’ll make a really grainy kind of ugly looking frosting. So if you’re looking for your cake to be really perfect, just keep that in mind. As I go, I’m always trying to level things out so that my cake is even when I cut into it. You can even look from the side. That looks pretty darn even to me. And if you ever need to fix any small details, you can always go in with a smaller tool like this little mini offset spatula. Just add on whatever you need. Last layer of cake. I’m going to drop it down as evenly as I possibly can. Got to be really careful when you’re stacking these cuz it’s like when you put a sticker down on one of your Legos. You can’t really peel it back up and do it again. This is it. And for this very last layer of frosting, I’m going to dig all of that frosting up. Scrape every last bit out of my bowl because now we need all of it. We’re using all the rest of the frosting to coat the entire outside of the cake. I’ll lick this bowl later. Now, we just got to have fun with it. Just spread it out. bring it evenly to the edges of the cake because what’s going to happen is it’s basically going to work like a chocolate fountain where it falls down the sides and evenly coats the cake as we continue to spread. I’m pushing it in such a way that I try to make sure there’s an even amount falling down the sides at all times. I’m just going to start to ease it down the sides. Every so often I can also scrape a bit more off the top and then use that on the sides of the cake as well. What’s really fun about frosting a cake is the fact that even if you’re not very experienced, you can really just play around and start to learn how things work when you spread in different ways and with different tools. And I actually find it to be such a fun process because if anything gets messed up, you can literally just scrape the frosting and start from scratch again. I’m not actually going to worry how smooth the outer part looks just yet because I’m going to add a fun little pattern to this thing. I’ve got a bit of extra frosting here. And what I’ll do is just put down these little dollops of some of that frosting and make fun little patterns through it. What it’ll do is give our cake this really cool wavy look. I don’t know why, but I just love that messy look that you can get from doing fun patterns like this. Kind of makes it feel more like an art piece and you can just make it different every single time. I’ll continue this pattern all across the top of the cake as well as down the sides. At this point, too, this is all just for fun. We already know the cake looks good. We already know it’s going to taste good. And we just got to make it look like literally whatever we want. That is a beautiful chocolate cake, but I’m sure you’re dying to see what’s on the inside. So, let’s take out a nice big slice. Cue the dramatic music. You’re probably thinking right now, Nick, that’s such a huge piece of cake. Who are you going to share it with? Nobody. Oh my god, I forgot the knife. [Music]