Recipe: Dark Chocolate Cake

This recipe needs no fancy name. Its flavour and moistness speak for themselves. This cake was a staple of childhood celebrations in my house while growing up — it makes a fabulous base for Black Forest Cake, but is also excellent with chocolate cream cheese icing and cinnamon hearts. Of course, if I were to give it a fancy name, I’d probably call it “Triple Layer Fudge Cake”.. or something like that.

This cake has been the base for a number of birthday cakes for my own kids. One year I used it to make a pirate ship, another year it was transformed into a volcano.

This year, it is being used in a Minecraft themed creation, complete with little marzipan piggies. You can check that recipe out over here:

Minecraft Terrain Block Cake

Ingredients:

2 cups boiling water
1 cup cocoa

2 3/4 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon (optional)
1/2 tsp ginger (optional)
1/2 tsp cardamom (optional)

1 cup butter, softened
2 1/4 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla

Mix boiling water and cocoa. Whisk well and let cool to room temperature. Preheat oven to 350F.

Sift dry goods together in medium bowl. Cream together sugar, butter, and vanilla. Add eggs one at a time and mix well.

Add flour mixture (in 3 parts) and cocoa mixture (in 2 parts) to butter mixture, blending between each addition. Spread in 3 well-greased pans.

Bake for 25 – 30 minutes, or until toothpick comes clean. Cool.