Recipe: Black Cocoa Chocolate Cake

Is there such thing as too much chocolate? We think not — so we created a sheet cake that’s so dark and chocolatey that it’s actually black. The flavor is every chocolate-lover’s dream: slightly bitter, rich, and intensely chocolatey. It has just the tiniest hint of sweetness and the same bittersweet flavor you get from a fancy chocolate bar.

So, how did we manage to make a cake with such an intense chocolate flavor? It’s all thanks to black cocoa powder.

To make black cocoa powder, the cocoa is heavily dutched, meaning that it is treated with an alkaline solution to neutralize its acidity. The result is a dark cocoa powder with a robust chocolate flavor.

Despite its name, black cocoa powder can range in color from deep red to completely black depending on the amount of dutching it goes through. Black cocoa varieties labeled “cocoa noir” or “jet black” provide the darkest color and is what we relied on to achieve the intense color of our cake. This type of black cocoa looks almost like charcoal powder and is commonly used to achieve a striking black color without having to use food dye. (Just think of the outside of an Oreo cookie. This is how they achieve their signature black color.)

While black cocoa powder is visually stunning, baking with it can be a bit tricky. For some people, the flavor can be a bit too intense. Most recipes combine it with other cocoa powders or chocolate varieties to balance the flavor. Our frosting recipe does exactly that and pairs it with sweet milk chocolate to balance the bitterness. Black cocoa powder also doesn’t react with baking soda the same way other cocoa varieties do, so it’s important to add an ingredient with acid (like coffee) or rely on baking powder to achieve your lift.

Once you get used to working with black cocoa powder you may never want to go back to the regular stuff again, and this cake is the perfect recipe to jump all the way into the deep end of black cocoa possibilities.