so a lot of you have been asking me for a rich chocolate cake that only has cocoa powder in it
no melted chocolate and honestly I didn't think it was possible until I decided to ditch the
regular hot water method of making chocolate cake and instead use my vanilla cake recipe as a base
and turned it into the most incredibly delicious and rich chocolate cake that doesn't have that
weird baking soda taste so to start off you want to preheat your oven to 160c or 320f with the fan
on and grease or line two eight inch cake tins as always I'm using my homemade cake release to
grease my tins set these aside and in a bowl sift together your dry ingredients so I've got
210 grams of all-purpose flour which is one and three quarter cups 25 grams of cornstarch
which is a quarter cup half a teaspoon of baking soda one teaspoon of baking powder 2 teaspoons
of instant coffee powder half a teaspoon of salt and 100 grams of unsweetened cocoa
powder which is one cup and then using a whisk just mix that all together until well combined
okay now set this aside for now and in a large bowl add in 113 grams of room temperature
unsalted butter which is half a cup my butter was still quite firm as it's really cold here
in New Zealand so I just heated it up ever so slightly and then also add in 158 grams of
unflavored vegetable oil which is three quarters of a cup and 332 grams of white granulated sugar
which is one and two third cups and then using a hand or stand mixer cream that together for
two minutes until it's light and creamy and you want to do this on a medium speed
okay next you want to add in three large eggs one at a time mixing well
in between each addition so about 15 seconds in between each egg and
you want to do this on a low to medium speed to allow it to emulsify properly
okay now next you want to add in one tablespoon of vanilla one teaspoon of white vinegar and 112
grams of room temperature buttermilk which is about half a cup and then just mix that
all together until well combined this recipe uses one and a half cups of Buttermilk in total but you
only want to use half a cup of it for this step okay now once that's done just get all of your
batter off of your attachments because we're going to be doing the rest by hand so next you want to
add in half of your pre-sifted dry ingredients from earlier and fold that in with a spatula
until just combined then you want to add in your remaining one cup of Buttermilk which is 225 grams
and fold that in until just combined and then add in the remaining dry ingredients and again fold
until just combined so you want to make sure your batter is nice and homogeneous with no bits of
flour running through the batter but you also just want to be careful not to over mix it okay now
that looks pretty good and it smells incredible and now you just want to evenly distribute this
into our two pre-prepared cake tins and then you just want to drop your cake tins lightly on your
counter to remove any large air bubbles and now these are going to go into the oven for 40 minutes
or until a toothpick comes out clean so my cakes are out of the oven now they smell so rich and
chocolatey they've been Cooling in the cake tins for about 20 minutes and now I'm just running a
thin knife around the edges to release the cakes from the cake tins and then turning them out onto a
wire rack to completely cool these cake layers are so so nice and soft and they have a beautiful dark
color to them which I absolutely love now while these are cooling let's go ahead and make the
most incredibly delicious chocolate cream cheese frosting if you haven't tried a chocolate cream
cheese frosting yet then you just absolutely have to try it even if it's not with this chocolate
cake so you want to start off by creaming 225 grams of room temperature unsalted butter which
is one cup until it's light and fluffy if you're using a stand mixer then you want to do this with
a paddle attachment next you want to add in 570 grams of icing sugar which is four and a half cups
in three batches while mixing on a low speed to stop your icing sugar from you know flying
everywhere and you want to make sure each batch of icing sugar is mixed in well before you add
in the next. icing sugar is also known as powdered or confectioners sugar depending on where you are
in the world now I also know that four and a half cups of icing sugar seems like a lot but I promise
you this frosting is not too sweet now at this point your mixture may be a little kind of crumbly
but that's totally fine and next we're going to add in 335 grams of cold cream cheese which is one
and a half cups and remember to use the firm block type not the spreadable type and you also want to
add in a one and a half teaspoons of vanilla and then you just want to mix that together
until just combined and everything is nice and smooth avoid over mixing because the more you mix
the softer your frosting is going to become okay now to finish off you want to add in 75 grams of
unsweetened cocoa powder which is three quarters of a cup and before I start mixing I like to fold
some of the frosting over the cocoa powder and this just helps prevent the cocoa powder
from going everywhere and then you basically just want to mix that until it's just combined
okay and that is our incredibly delicious chocolate cream cheese frosting all done
okay so my cakes are cooled down now so let's start stacking so I'm starting off by placing my
first cake layer onto my cake stand and spreading out a layer of frosting using my offset spatula
once that's done my next cake layer goes on top and then I'm
just spreading out another layer of frosting all around the cake
and then I'm also using my cake scraper to smooth out the edges and my offset spatula to bring in
that top lip of frosting so I have some nice sharp edges and then to finish off I'm just doing some
piping on the top with a 1A piping tip I really love the look of these little kind of raindrop
patterns on the top okay and that is it my chocolate cake is all done this cake is honestly
so so rich and moist you wouldn't have a clue that it doesn't have any melted chocolate in it
um
that is ridiculously good the cake is so so rich and moist and the cream cheese frosting
just honestly goes so so well and the best part is that it's not too sweet so because the cake layers
have a lot of cocoa in them which give them that nice rich flavor it's still super moist and nice
without having too much sugar so yeah it's just it's so so good you guys have to try it out if you
do decide to give this recipe a go don't forget to leave a review on my blog it really helps my
content reach more people and I love hearing from you guys I'll see you in the next video