If you’re an avid baker you will always be looking for the perfect recipe for the most amazing chocolate cake! I’ve tried many recipes over the years and could never find the one that would fit perfectly. Scrolling through so many food blogs and baking sites, flipping page after page of recipe books, I learned after many trials and tests that you’ll always tweak a recipe a little or have some parts of one recipe you like and some parts of another to achieve your desired version of a perfect cake.

Chocolate_Cake


Basic Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake is the most basic cake recipe but is also the most difficult to perfect. It needs to have that great chocolate flavor, a nice moist crumb texture and should stay on your spoon once you take a bite!  I have learned through my own recipe testing and tasting that everyone has their own preference of what type of texture they like. Some People like a dense and fudge like cake and some people like a light airy chocolate cake.  



Ultimate Chocolate Cake

An ultimate chocolate cake is incomplete without the perfect chocolate frosting to compliment it.

But before we discuss this chocolate cake frosting lets discuss some key ingredients that I think are essential to have an ultimate chocolate cake:

Buttermilk or Yogurt: it is essential if you want to have a moist and soft cake.

Oil: if you want a nice soft cake oil is your best friend. No doubt that butter cakes taste delicious, but for shelf life and storage oil cakes are the way to go.

  Mayo: I know it sounds weird but trust me.

Hot Coffee: NEVER forget to put hot coffee. If a recipe asks for hot water, add a teaspoon of coffee to it immediately. Trust me you won’t regret it.

You could easily use all these ingredients in a number of different recipes for example making a chocolate chip banana bread, YUM, making my mouth water as I’m typing or a moist vanilla cake as well, obviously not the hot coffee but everything else is up for grabs.

Now that I have shared some of my secrets of what I think are essential ingredients let’s move on to the chocolate frosting required for our ultimate chocolate cake. There are a number of frostings that you could use for icing your cake, some people prefer chocolate ganache and some prefer buttercream frosting.

From what I have seen people tend to go more towards a nice fluffy chocolate ganache frosting this gives our cake a fudge like texture and makes the eating experience even more pleasurable. A nice fluffy chocolate buttercream goes well with our cake as well. Adding a few chocolate chips or sneaking in a little bit of melted chocolate ganache makes it go YES! to TOP TIER.

Wanna make a black forest cake? Checkout this article (Deconstructed Black Forest Cake)

TIPS AND TRICKS FOR THAT PERFECT CLASSIC CAKE:

Here are some of my tips and tricks that guarantee a perfect cake coming out of the oven every time:

·       What some people don’t understand is DO NOT OVER MIX. Ever. Please don’t over mix your batter.

·       Always sift your dry ingredients. You never know if you have something in your flour.

·       Always check your cake 10 minutes before the allotted baking time. Everyone’s oven bakes at different speeds.

If you’re thinking of making a cake and experimenting with different flavors I suggest go for it! CMON GET UP!