Favorite Cocoa Layer Cake with Chocolate Frosting
Another very moist chocolate layer cake recipe that calls for both brown and granulated sugar.
Servings 12
Cost 5
Ingredients
- 1 cup boiling hot water or very hot coffee (228 grams)
- ¾ cup natural unsweetened cocoa (60-70 grams)
- 2 cups all-purpose flour (260 grams)
- 1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
- ¾ teaspoon sea salt
- 1 cup superfine sugar (200 grams)
- 1 cup tightly packed golden brown sugar (240 grams)
- 2 sticks unsalted butter cool room temp (228 grams)
- 4 large whole eggs, cool room temp
- ¾ cup buttermilk, cool room temp
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon chocolate extract optional -- did not use
Chocolate Buttermilk Frosting
- 2 oz unsweetened chocolate (56 grams)
- 2 oz semi-sweet chocolate (56 grams)
- 8 oz unsalted or salted butter, softened and room temperature or slightly warm (228 grams)
- ¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder (20 grams)
- 4 cups sifted powdered sugar (3 ½ cups before sifting)
- ¼ cup buttermilk
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- Pinch or two of salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. or 325 F if using black cake pans.
- Grease and flour 2 9 inch round pans and line with parchment
- Combine water and cocoa in a bowl and stir until smooth. Reserve.
- Sift together dry ingredients. Reserve.
- In large bowl of an electric mixer, cream butter and sugars.
- Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir buttermilk into cocoa mixture.
- Add alternately with dry ingredients in 3 additions.
- 8: Pour into pans.
- 9: Bake 28-38 minutes (see note) or until a toothpick comes out barely clean. Cool and frost.
Frosting
- First make sure all of your ingredients are at room temperature or on the warm side. If the butter or milk is too cold, it will cause the chocolate to clump up.
- Melt both chocolates in microwave, double boiler or bowl set over barely simmering water; set aside to cool.
- Beat the butter until creamy. Stir in the cocoa powder, about a cup of the powdered sugar, and the cooled melted chocolate. Scrape sides of bowl and beat well; add remaining powdered sugar, then add milk, vanilla and salt, beating and scraping until you get the consistency you like.
Notes
Notes:
--I used dark pans and baked at 325 degrees F. Bake time was about 38 minutes.
-- The recipe makes a lot of batter and it comes almost to the top of two 9 inch round cake pans. To be safe, you might want to put a cookie sheet on the lower baking rack to catch any drips. I did, but luckily it didn't drip.