Chocolate cake came up in the comments on Monday's recipe for quick yellow cake, so here, promptly, is a recipe. This must, however, be prefaced by Laurie Colwin's statement on the topic: "Anyone who spends time in the kitchen eventually comes to realize that what she or he is looking for is the perfect chocolate cake."
Everyone has their preferences when it comes to this perfect chocolate cake, and they usually fall somewhere into Colwin's three types: flourless, fudgy, and cocoa.
Some chocolate cakes are completely flourless - quivering mousses of pure cacao. Some are closer to a brownie with a crackly crust. Others, often found in grocery store bakeries, appear to be dry sponge cakes colored brown. The latter put me off chocolate cake for a long time - I'm a fudge girl, myself. But this recipe changed that for me.
This is a cake cake, with a traditional cakey texture - light, spongy, moist. It has a beautiful shiny top, a springy middle, and it is also another easy, one-bowl recipe. And yet it tastes deeply of chocolate, with dark, almost bitter notes that penetrate the whole bite. It isn't "Death by Chocolate;" it isn't a dense fudgy flourless torte; it's a simple yet true chocolate cake, suitable for layering and frosting.
This was originally a Hershey's recipe; it makes sense, I suppose, that they would have perfected a chocolate cake by now.
Dark Chocolate Cake
makes two 9-inch round cakes or three 8-inch round cakes
2 cups white sugar
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup boiling water
Heat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour two 9-inch round baking pans, or three 8-inch round baking pans.
Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large mixer bowl. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla; beat on medium speed of mixer for 2 minutes. Mix in boiling water - the batter will be quite thin. Pour batter into prepared pans.
Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes on a wire rack, then tap the cakes out of the pans. Cool completely before frosting.
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Cooks illustrated from about a year ago has a recipe for a perfect chocolate bundt cake. Put it in a fancy catherdral bundt cake pan and you instantly impress your guests! Plus the wizards at cooks illustrated found the perfect, scientifically proven recipe!
luke- do you have a copy? i would love to try BOTH!
I'll dig it up
faith, you have no idea how happy you have just made me.
i wonder if i can dig up a peanut-butter frosting recipe...?
:)
Ha! You're welcome. Peanut butter frosting is easy - you just make a basic frosting and use peanut butter instead of butter. Basically, plop some peanut butter into a bowl with a little vanilla, milk, and a lot of powdered sugar. Mix with beaters until smooth and adjust pb/milk/sugar as you go to get the consistency and taste you want.
Faith, thanks for this recipe, I'd make it using 3 8-inch cake pans and the peanut butter frosting sound great!
Luke, someone gave me a cathedral bundt pan a couple of months ago, so I'm anxious for your recipe as well!
Faith, thanks for this. Any suggestions on the best coca powder to use? I will be trying it this weekend... with a mocha cream frosting hopefully
Hi all,
I made this recipe tonight with two (what I thought were small) changes: substituting buttermilk for the milk and using a 13x9" pan.
It fell - big time - any ideas as to why?
I did open the oven to check the rest of dinner about 10 minutes into the cooking. I've never had that happen before.
ps--Faith, great recipe. The batter was delicious and despite whatever went wrong with mine, it still looks wonderfully fudgy.
Laura, oh sad! I'm sorry; I hope it was still good! My chief thought is that the oven temp might have dipped too low, especially if you were cooking other dishes in it at the same time. If the temp gets too low the cake will often fall and become rather dense and possibly underbaked.
Thanks, Faith. I bet you're right. No worries, it tastes good and has the best texture I've ever had in a homemade cake.
the cooks illustrated perfect chocolate bundt cake is in their feb 2004 issue. It is Yummy! especcially with some fresh rasberries and tangy whipped cream
The chocolate bundt cake recipe is reprinted in this years cook's illustrated "holiday baking" issue. Do you think the recipe would work as a layer cake?
i wish i had read this last night before baking my son's birthday cake that did NOT rise! and i even went out specially to buy new baking powder. thanks for the future-use recipe :)
view Joan in SB's profile
A fantastic recipe, but I always used hot brewed coffee in place of the hot water and sour milk or buttermilk in place of regular milk. This gives a deeper chocolate flavor. And I am glad it was mentioned that this is a very thin batter, the sight of it makes a person panic and think something is wrong, but thin (batter) is in!
view Karen1Monger's profile
Just an update comment: I still make this cake a lot; it's a quick, go-to chocolate cake. It's truly never-fail, too, for me...
view faith's profile
To Laura: If you substitued buttermilk without also adding some baking soda to compensate chemically, you could have the results you describe. Baking is chemistry! Whenever you make a change, you need to balance it chemically with the other ingredients.
I personally love the Texas Sheet Cake recipe from the Joy of Cooking. It's my go-to recipe for kid birthdays and special events.
view CleanSimple's profile
I used this as a base for a tres leches cake, and it turned out fanatastic. Thank you for posting that, it's a great recipe!
view Rolando's profile
I just want to thank you for sharing this recipe. I was searching for a special cake to make and this sounded good...it's still too early for summer fruit. Two amazing things about this recipe to me. First, it worked at high altitude without any alterations. We live at 6800 feet and I have not baked a cake (successfully) for the entire 12 years we have lived here. I'm really psyched to have a go-to cake recipe! Second, this reminds me so much of the Hand-Me-Down chocolate cake recipe from my 1970s childhood....does anyone remember that?
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