Favorite Chocolate Cake
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Every home cook should have a go-to chocolate cake recipe. A recipe that’s a no-fail tried and true, works every time, delicious, decadent chocolate cake recipe. This is mine. Regardless of the occasion — whether birthday, holiday, picnic, summer, winter or fall — this is my Favorite Chocolate Cake recipe.
For Christmas, I love to dress it up with crushed peppermint toppings, or for birthdays I almost always add chocolate shavings, for picnics (thanks to my grandma’s tradition) it always has a layer of toasted chopped walnuts. At times, I even forgo the frosting and add a light dusting of confectioner sugar — which I think is beautiful!
Outside of being a truly delicious chocolate cake, it’s incredibly easy to make with items probably already in the pantry.
Favorite Chocolate Cake
Ingredients
1 cup butter (2-sticks)
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa (my pantry is always stocked with Hershey’s)
1 cup boiling water
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla
Directions
Preheat oven to 350-degrees. Prepare a baking pan.
(Note: At times I bake this in a 13″ x 9″ pan, for special occasions I make a 2-layer cake using (2) 9″ round cake pans. For a 3-layer cake, use (3) 8-inch round cake pans. To prepare pan, grease and flour, shaking off the excess. Set aside).
In a saucepan, melt butter over low heat. Add unsweetened cocoa and stir until combined. Add boiling water and stir until completely incorporated.
In a bowl combine flour, sugar and salt. Pour hot butter mixture over the flour, stir to combine and to cool.
In a separate bowl combine milk and eggs. Whisk together until frothy. Add baking powder, baking soda and vanilla and whisk to combine.
Add milk and egg mixture to the chocolate and flour mixtures. Thoroughly combine.
Pour batter into prepared cake pans.
Bake 30 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Chocolate Frosting
Ingredients
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa
3 cups powdered sugar
1/3 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
Directions
Melt butter in the microwave or saucepan over low heat. Stir in cocoa. Alternately add powdered sugar and milk, beating to a spreading consistency. Add small amounts of milk if needed. Stir in vanilla.
“Perfectly Chocolate” Chocolate Frosting by Hershey
Stephanie, thank you for sharing this recipe. I made it for an NCOIC’s farewell lunch (his favorite dessert was anything chocolate) and it went so fast…they could taste the freshness of homemade from scratch, they ate every piece and left half of a boxed mix devil’s food bundtcake Untouched, I will never buy/use boxed devil’s food cake mix again,
Yay!! It makes me SO happy to hear that! Of course, you and I know that almost everything is better from scratch! We love that chocolate cake recipe too.
hi you mention flour but what kind? self raising or plain
I always use unbleached all-purpose flour. Thanks for the question! I’ll clarify that in the recipe.