How to bake a chocolate cake step by step

Best chocolate cake recipe

Our chocolate cake recipe is the best ever. It is moist, fluffy, and chocolatey tender. Chocolate fans would adore it. It is relatively easy to whip up with fewer ingredients than vanilla cake.

A lot of efforts and trials have been expended in the process of churning up this chocolate cake recipe. It was because of its popularity among our customers that we decided to pen it down.

This chocolate cake is luscious and can remain so for several days.

chocolate cake ingredients

What you will need for this cake recipe are commonly cake ingredients that are readily available in your cupboard. Ingredients for the chocolate cake are as follows:

All-purpose flour/plain flour
Sugar
Butter
Salt
Unsweetened cocoa powder
American buttermilk
Eggs
Baking powder
Baking soda
Oil
Coffee and
Vanilla extract

How to bake chocolate cake

Moist and fluffy chocolate cake is made with the following measured recipe;

Homemade chocolate cake recipe

Measuring correctly is a must. It is best practice to follow the instructions of the recipe religiously.

3 cups all-purpose flour
3 cups granulated sugar
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 big eggs
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking soda
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon baking powder

Instructions (step by step)

As with other cake-making instructions, preheat your oven to 350 F. Butter your cake pans and dust them with flour, and get rid of the excess flour.
Mix together the dry ingredients; flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a stand mixer or hand mixer using a medium speed until combined very well.
Then add the wet ingredients ( buttermilk, warm water, eggs, oil, and vanilla) to the wet ingredients and combine slowly but steadily. This is supposed to take 5-7 minutes.
Divide the batter among your pans and bake for 30-35 minutes.
Cool on the cake wire rack for 10 minutes or so. Turn out the cake from the pan and allow it to cool completely.
Frost your cake with your favorite frosting. Although there are many types of frosting, I had always gone for buttercream frosting. This is because it is softer and can spread thinly evenly than most icing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Bakers, especially the newbies often ask the following questions. Below the questions are answers to them.

How do I make my cake moist and fluffy?

Sugar is hygroscopic. This means that it attracts moisture and holds onto it. This will result eventually to a moist and tender cake. If you reduce the amount of sugar in a recipe, you are equally reducing the chance of the chocolate cake being moist. Combining butter and sugar together (creaming) is one essential tip to make the cake light, fluffy and moist. When you whisk it well to incorporate air, it helps to give the cake that perfect finish.

Why use baking soda and baking powder together

Some recipe call for both baking soda and baking powder even though their primary role is to make our care rise. Now the reason behind using both is because we already have an acidic ingredient (buttermilk) in our recipe. In a case like this, a little baking powder will give the extra lift required to make the recipe perfect. However, the baking can be done by baking powder alone, but its going to be too acidic hence the addition of baking soda.

What is the purpose of coffee in chocolate baking?

Coffee and chocolate are best friends.!

If you add coffee to a recipe with chocolate, enhancing the chocolate flavour is what the coffee does. You will not be able to taste the coffee usually.
In fact our chocolate cake won’t be chocolatey without the coffee. In any case that you are not a coffee lover and you don’t want to use it, you can substitute with the same amount of warm water with the amount of coffee specified in the recipe.

Best frosting for your chocolate cake?

This chocolate cake can take on any frosting but my preferred frosting is chocolate buttercream frosting. My Chocolate Buttercream Frosting recipe is good in many delicious cakes and cupcakes, but my favorite is when it paired with this chocolate cake recipe, vanilla cake or even my white cake recipe. However, it is wholesomely delicious on anything it touches.

How to make chocolate frosting

First of all, add cocoa powder to a large bowl and whisk through the cocoa powder well to remove any lumps.
Then beat butter in a mixing bowl with the whisk attachment on a medium speed for 4 minutes until creamy and lightened in color. Then, cream together the butter and cocoa powder until well combined.
Add remaining ingredients – sugar, heavy cream, vanilla extract, and salt. You keep adding the ingredients batch by batch in order to get the desired result. Repeat until all sugar and milk have been added.