I have a special place in my heart for chocolate cake. Every year, my mom makes me homemade chocolate cake for my birthday, with homemade chocolate frosting. And it’s just not my birthday without it!
Over the years, we’ve used a bunch of different recipes, and some have been alright, some have been awesome, but this one really is the best chocolate cake recipe. I’m not joking! It’s the ultimate chocolate cake. Even the batter somehow manages to look better than any other cake batter.
So get your baking gear ready, and get started on the best moist chocolate cake recipe!
Ultimate Chocolate Cake
Preparation Time: 30m Cooking Time: 30m Total Time: 1h00m
Servings
Yields 1 2-layer 9″ round cake.
Ingredients
2 cups boiling water
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 cups white sugar
4 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350F, and grease and flour 2 9-inch round cake pans.
- In a medium bowl, pour the boiling water over the cocoa powder. Mix it until it’s smooth. Set it aside and allow it to cool to room temperature.
- You’ll have an easier time avoiding lumps if you start by pouring just a bit of water over the cocoa, and stirring that to a thick paste. Once it’s smooth, add the rest of the water and whisk.
- In a large bowl, cream the butter until it’s soft enough to beat easily. Gradually add the sugar, beating the mixture between each addition until it’s light and fluffy.
- Add the eggs one at a time, beating the mixture thoroughly each time. Incorporate the vanilla.
- Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
- Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture in three steps, alternating with the cocoa mixture. Mix until the batter is just smooth.
- Spread the batter evenly between the two greased pans.
- Bake the cakes in the preheated oven for 25-30 mins, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
- Let the cakes cool 5 minutes in their pans, then transfer them to a wire rack.
Tips
- I prefer my homemade chocolate cake to not be too too sweet. If you like things a bit sweeter, you can add a bit of extra sugar to the butter. Extra sugar will help the cake be a bit fluffier, too!
- To get a nice, fluffy ultimate chocolate cake, there are three super important steps:
- Beat the butter and sugar really well. The sugar helps pull air bubbles into the batter, making a fluffier cake.
- Beat the eggs in one at a time. You can even beat them before putting them into the batter. Beating eggs makes them absorb air molecules, just like the sugar. Again, you get a fluffier cake.
- Once the flour is in, don’t overmix the cake, or you’ll make your homemade chocolate cake tough. That’s why adding the flour in batches is so important — it’s much easier to incorporate flour that way, so you don’t have to mix as much.
- If you start with all your ingredients at room temperature, you’ll get a fluffier cake – making this best chocolate cake recipe even better!
- You shouldn’t fill a cake pan more than 2/3 full. The cake needs a bit of room to rise without spilling. If your cake pans are too shallow, you can always split your cake into three layers.
- To get the ultimate chocolate cake out of the pans more easily, you can line the bottom of the pans with a circle of parchment paper. The cake’ll come right out of the pan, and the paper will peel right off.
- You can use wax paper too, but if you do, it has to be completely covered by batter — you shouldn’t have any poking out the sides.