Gemma's Bigger Bolder Baking Best-Ever Chocolate Cake
Hi Bold Bakers! Everybody needs those master recipes for cakes that will never fail you
and that are sure to impress all of your guests like my Carrot Cake recipe and my Yellow Cake.
Well, today I'm sharing with you my go-to Chocolate Cake recipe with Chocolate Fudge
Frosting. So let's get baking!
The reason this chocolate cake is my go-to recipe is because it's really fast to make,
you can mix it all by hand without a machine. It's rich, moist and every time I bake it,
people love it.
So we're going to get started in a large bowl. Sift together your flour, sugar, cocoa powder,
baking powder, baking soda and salt. And then gently mix them all together. The reason that
we sieve this is sometimes the cocoa powder can have lumps and also little bits in it
and you want to make sure you get those out.
Once you sieve them, just give them a little mix together because I like to make sure the
raising agent and everything is all mixed up.
Ok, we're going to set this guy aside and then in a separate jug we're going to mix
together all of our wet ingredients.
Add in your buttermilk, flavorless oil, eggs, vanilla extract and freshly-brewed coffee.
For the coffee, you can also make it on coffee granules and that works really well. Just
make sure you don't leave this ingredient out because it compliments the chocolate really
well and gives the cake extra depth.
And don't worry, you cannot taste the coffee.
So to make the cake batter we're going to add our wet ingredients into our dry. And
then take a whisk and gently mix them all together. You do not want to overmix this
batter. Just mix until you get rid of all the lumps and stop.
So one of the key ingredients in this cake is buttermilk. It just makes it lovely and
moist. But I know that in a lot of countries you can't get buttermilk. So in the recipe,
I'll show you how to make an alternative to buttermilk.
To bake my cake, I buttered and lined three 9 inch tins. I'm using three because I like
lots of layers but you can also bake it in two.
Divide your batter as evenly as possible between three tins. If this gooey, bubbly cake batter
is anything to go by you know this is going to be a gorgeous cake.
Ok, these guys are ready for the oven. We're going to bake them off at 350F/180C until
they're just cooked. And you'll know because they'll be firm in the middle.
While our cakes are in the oven, this is the perfect time to make our chocolate fudge frosting.
In a stand mixer, add in your room temperature butter and whip it up until it's nice and
light. You can also make this with a hand mixer.
Lovely. When your butter is whipped and nice and light in color, this is the time you want
to add in your icing sugar.
When adding your icing sugar, it's important to add it spoonful by spoonful letting each
one incorporate and then add the next. This is an important stage and I know a lot of
you have problems with buttercream getting volume in there and this will help that. Also,
make sure your icing sugar is sifted.
Ok perfect. As you can see, it's nice and light and fluffy. We're going to go in with
our spatula, scrape down the sides of the bowl and make sure we didn't miss any sugar
and then we're going to add in our sifted cocoa powder, milk and vanilla extract and
then we're going to turn it up to a medium high speed and let it beat really well together
and whip up nicely.
To yield a really good frosting, make sure you use an unsweetened cocoa powder and that's
also good quality. And hot chocolate is not a replacement for cocoa powder in case you
were thinking it.
And there you have it, Chocolate Fudge Frosting. I'm going to give this guy a little taste.
That is so rich and decadent. It's going to pair really well with our chocolate cake.
Ok. Let's set this guy aside and if you're not going to use it straight away, maybe in
a few days time, you can pop it into the fridge.
Now I'm going to check on our cakes.
You know when they're done because they're firm in the middle and you have all these
lovely bubbles on top. We're going to let these guys go totally cold before we decorate
them.
To start frosting your cake, we're going to take one layer turn it upside down so we can
have a nice, smooth surface to frost on.
Then just spoon on your frosting. Spread it all around trying to get it as even as possible.
You see all those lovely bubbles. We create those by beating the buttercream. That's what
makes it nice and light. And then continue with the rest of the layers.
I find that when it comes to frosting cakes, the faster you do it the better result you'll
have. So try not to spend too much time. Don't overthink it and just go for it.
Now I happen to have this lovely little turntable and it helps me a lot when I'm cake decorating
but if you don't have one don't worry they're not totally necessary.
Now what we're going to do is let the crumb layer set. So we're going to pop it into the
fridge until the frosting goes kind of hard and then we're going to decorate on top of
that.
In addition to the Chocolate Frosting, I'm also going to decorate my cake with sprinkles.
Sprinkles make everything look better. They give it beautiful color and just elevate the
look of it.
I'm going to use these beautiful colored sprinkles and can you believe I actually made these.
It's really easy and I show you how on a Bonus Video over on my website. I know you're going
to love them so I advise you to go check it out.
It's been around 20 minutes or so and as you can see our crumb layer is nice and set so
we're going to go ahead and frost our final layer on top of this.
When frosting a cake, I think it's a good idea to start at the top and work your way
down the sides. Just put a big dollop of frosting and go around as far as you can. Beautiful!
Try and get it as smooth as you can all around. So I'm going to keep the sides smooth but
on the top I want to do something a little different. And I love easy tricks about how
to decorate cakes so this one is take a spoon, dip it in some hot water, dry it off and then
put it on the edge of the cake and swirl it all the way around until you get it right
in the middle.
Lovely. Wow! How easy is that to give it a beautiful finish to your cake. And for the
finishing touch for your cake, add on your homemade sprinkles. This color is so amazing.
And remember for your sprinkles, you can make all different shapes and sizes. I made some
small circles and some big ones.
To serve, cut yourself a big slice of cake. Look at how crumbly and moist it is. This
is why it's my go-to chocolate cake recipe.
As you can see from this cake there's a good reason why it's my go-to recipe. It's rich
and decadent and I know you guys are going to love it. And don't forget as well, you
can make your own Homemade Sprinkles.
I really hope you enjoyed my chocolate cake recipe. And thank you so much for subscribing
to my channel. I'll see you back here every Thursday for more Bigger Bolder Baking.