You know what they say, “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”, and I feel the same way about this gorgeous chocolate cake.
I discovered this black beauty in an Ina Garten’s Barefoot contessa tv-episode – some 10 years ago, where she referred to it as “Aunt Beatty’s chocolate cake”, or something along those lines. When I googled the recipe, I read the comments as I usually do, and I noticed a couple of the commenters swearing that the “Aunt Beatty’s cake” was really just the “Black magic cake” from the chocolate company Hersey’s. Turns out, they were right. Actually, I’ve noticed that most of these “best ever chocolate cakes” on the internet are based on the Black magic cake, if not an exact copy.
I’ve made dozens of different chocolate cakes before stumbling upon this one 10 years ago, and the black magic cake is truly magical – In my opinion it’s the perfect chocolate cake. It’s moist, rich, soft and has a beautiful crumb and flavour to beat. To this day, it’s my go to recipe. The best part is, this cake is a breeze to make. You don’t even need a mixer.
I’ve made a few minor tweaks here, as I always do. However, I feel like this recipe is just perfect – so, less tinkering is better in this case.
And here it is… the only damn chocolate cake recipe you’ll ever need…
Seriously, if you haven’t already, you need to try this recipe…
Chocolate cake
Ingredients
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 3/4 cups flour all purpose
- 3/4 cups cocoa powder
- 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
- t tsp salt
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract
- 1 cup coffe warm or cold (not piping hot)
Frosting between layers
- 1 cup butter at room temperature
- 1/2 cup cocoa powder
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp salt
- 5 tbsp syrup any thick kind will do
- 1 cup icing sugar
Instructions
- Preheat over to 350° (175°c).
- Mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl ( sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt). Stir with a whisk until everything is well incorporated.
- Add the eggs, buttermilk and vanilla and slowly mix everything until just combined (it's ok if it's lumpy at this point).
- Add the coffee and stir with a whisk until just combined. Again, it's ok if the batter is slightly lumpy at this point, as long as you don't have big clumps of trapped flour. Some people like to sift the batter into a new bowl at this point, but honey… you do you 😉
- Pour batter into liberally buttered cake pans, and bake for 20-40 minutes, depending on the size of your pans. Shallower cake pans will be closer to 20 minutes while deeper pans can take up to 40 minutes.
Frosting
- Cream the butter in a stand mixer. Add cocoa powder and mix well, scraping down the bottom of the bowl.
- Add the icing sugar, salt and vanilla and beat together for about 2-4 minutes. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl a couple of times.
- Add icing only once the cakes have cooled down completely.