Simply Perfect Chocolate Cake
My Simply Perfect Chocolate Cake is soft and fluffy, rich and fudgy and is ready in 1 hour! It's the only Chocolate Cake recipe you'll ever need.
Ingredients
Chocolate Cake
- 270 g (1¾ cups) plain cake flour regular plain flour is also fine
- 90 g (¾ cup) Dutch processed cocoa
- 1½ tsp baking powder
- 1½ tsp bicarbonate soda
- pinch salt
- 465 g (2 cups) caster sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup (250ml) buttermilk buttermilk yields a softer cake, but regular milk is also fine
- ½ cup (125ml) vegetable oil
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 cup (250ml) boiling water
Fudgy Chocolate Frosting
- 115 g (¼ cup) unsalted butter melted
- 65 g (⅓ cup) Dutch processed cocoa
- 2 tbsp milk
- ½ tsp vanilla extraxt
- 375 g (1½ cups) icing sugar
Instructions
Chocolate Cake
- Preheat oven to 180°C/ 350°F/ 165° FF and prepare your chosen pan/pans (I'm using a large loaf tin, but you can use a bundt tin, circle tins or 2 smaller loaf tins). Grease and line loaf tin with baking paper.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the dry ingredients
- In a small jug, combine the buttermilk, eggs, oil and vanilla
- Add the buttermilk mixture from the jug to the dry ingredients, then mix on medium-high for 2 minutes, until light and fluffy
- Gently stir through the boiling water, until combined. The mixture will be very thin
- Pour mixture into prepared tin and bake for 40-50 minutes (depending on tin size), or until a cake tester comes out clean
- Cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn onto a cake rack to cool completely
Fudgy Chocolate Frosting
- Stir cocoa into the melted butter
- With a hand mixer, add the milk and icing sugar alternately, mixing until smooth and fluffy
- Mix through the vanilla
- Frost the cooled cake, using an offset spatula
Notes
For this recipe, I mainly use a large (deep) loaf tin. Alternatively, you could use a bundt tin that has been well greased with butter and dusted with flour, smaller bundt tins, mini loaf tins, round or square tins for a layer cake....it's so adaptable! Just adjust the cooking time accordingly.
The frosting could be doubled if you are splitting the cake into more than one tin.
Cake Pan Variations:
- 2 x smaller loaf pans: 21cm x 11cm, bake for 40-45 minutes
- larger loaf pan: 27cm x 11cm, bake for 1 hour
- square pan: 23cm x 23cm, bake for 50-55 minutes
- slab pan: 23cm x 33cm, bake for 25 minutes
- bundt tin: 5 cup, bake for 50-55 minutes