Coffee Flavored Chocolate Cake



Coffee flavored Chocolate Cake

The best chocolate cake I have ever made, seriously! Dark, moist, fluffy and a very subtle flavor of coffee is what gives this cake all the glamor that a chocolate cake may deserve.

The recipe is borrowed and adapted from Ina Garten of Barefoot Contessa. This is what she says about this insanely delicious cake: “This is the most fabulous chocolate cake that I’ve ever made,”…“It’s so easy and so moist and light. There’s buttermilk and a cup of coffee in the batter!…” I could not agree more. While I was baking and smelling the brewed coffee, I was actually thinking that this is going to be special chocolate cake catered to the taste buds of adults. I was wrong! My kids loved it and declared it better than any other chocolate cake they ever had.

I had to take a cake to a friend’s place and I had to quickly decide what kind of chocolate cake I was going to make. At this time I was actually leafing the Food and Wine book to get to the Syrian Semolina Walnut Cake recipe which I was going to bake the next day, when this Double Chocolate Layer Cake caught my eyes. I quickly read through it and I had almost everything I needed. The cake had to be done without the frosting; instead I did a light drizzle of coffee flavored chocolate ganache with a sprinkle of lightly toasted walnuts.

I had no time to take any photos, so I was not going to blog about it. We got back some of the cake from the friends home, so fortunately I had part of the cake to take a picture of the next day. It would be totally unfair if I did not share this wonderful recipe.


Coffee flavored Chocolate Cake

Some changes that I made other than leaving out the frosting:

  1. I did not have enough AP flour, so I used part all purpose flour and part self rising flour to which I had to adjust the amount of the baking powder.
  2. Used plain yogurt and water combined instead of buttermilk.
  3. Did not make a layer cake; baked the cake in a bundt pan.





Coffee flavored Chocolate Cake



Coffee Flavored Chocolate Cake


Ingredients:

  1. 1 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
  2. 3/4 cup self raising flour
  3. 2 cups sugar
  4. 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
  5. 1.5 teaspoon baking powder
  6. a pinch of baking soda
  7. 1/2 teaspoon  salt
  8. 1/2 cup plain yogurt + 1/2 cup water (or 1 cup buttermilk)
  9. 1/2 cup vegetable oil
  10. 2 large eggs
  11. 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  12. 1 cup freshly brewed coffee



For the Chocolate Ganache:

  1. 3/4 cup broken dark chocolate, or semi sweet chocolate chip
  2. 3-4 tablespoons cream or whole milk
  3. 1 tablespoon coffee granules

Toasted walnuts to decorate




Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 350°. Butter a bundt pan. Dust the pans with flour, tapping out any excess.

Whisk the yogurt and water together till well combined.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle (or with the hand mixer), mix the flours with the sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder & soda and salt at low speed. In a medium bowl, whisk the buttermilk or (yogurt and water) combined with the oil, eggs and vanilla.

Slowly beat the buttermilk  mixture into the dry ingredients until just incorporated, then slowly beat in the hot coffee until fully incorporated. (after the coffee is added, the batter becomes extremely runny, which had m me in doubts; keep faith and move ahead, do not get tempted to add any extra flour. At the end of 30-35 minutes you will have a perfectly baked cake).

Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of each cake comes out clean. Let the cake cool in the pan for 30 minutes, then invert the cake onto a rack to cool completely.


To make the Topping:


Combine the chocolate and the cream/milk in a heat resistant bowl and melt the chocolate in the microwave or in a double boiler. Stir in the coffee granules. Drizzle over the cooled cake with a spoon.

Garnish with chopped lightly toasted walnuts.



Coffee flavored Chocolate Cake


It was a deliriously good cake, and I am not even a very much cake or dessert person. I don’t get the sweet cravings and am satisfied easily with a small bite of a slice. This cake was not overly sweet. The taste was more on the bittersweet side, I suppose because of the unsweetened cocoa and the coffee. Chocolate and coffee is a classic combination and this cake says it all about the winning combo in taste and flavor.


Coffee flavored Chocolate Cake


My part in writing blog is only to share recipes, but this time I will urge you (those of you who likes a good slice of chocolate cake) to try this out at least once. You will not regret.



Related Posts:

Vegan Chocolate Chip Coffee Cake

Eggless Chocolate Zucchini Nut Bread

Choco Nut Banana Bread




31 thoughts on “Coffee Flavored Chocolate Cake”

  • wow, it both looks and sounds fantastic, I trust your judgement completely! But first I have to make a certain fig cake….

  • Hey…wasn’t able to view your page properly for a long time. Have a lot of posts to catch up on!

    And I am so making this cake, it sounds like something we’d love to have.

  • This is a great coincidence. dont know why whenever I make a different cake I get to see a similar one on someone’s blog. yesterday I made a coffee cake with buttermilk in a bundt pan (my first bundt cake) and drizzled chocolate on that. and see here you have one…yours look divine Soma. and yes I also loved the taste.

  • Tempting cake..though I always avoid the coffee flavours….the oozing chocolate sauce just driving me crazy to to give a bite on it….

  • I can see this was a hearty and yummy cake. This should be tried soon, esp since you recommend:)

  • Can I use just AP instead of AP and self rising flour??

    Hi Annu

    If you are using only AP flour (that is 1 3/4 cup ap flour) use
    2 teaspoons baking soda + 1 teaspoon baking powder + total of 1 teaspoon salt ( as opposed to the 1/2 teaspoon i have used)

    these measurements are per the original recipe that Ina has used and she used all purpose flour.

    Hope this helps.

    Soma

  • Hi,

    I have only self raising flour at home now. Can you please tell me the measurement for this?
    Thank you.

    Self raising flour already has the baking powder and salt in it, tho’ I am not exactly sure how much baking powder the flour has as per cup measurement. If you are using self raising flour, skip the salt and I would think the baking powder too. The original recipe with all AP flour had 2 teaspoons baking soda + 1 teaspoon baking powder for 1&3/4 cup ap flour. I am thinking, you could skip the baking powder all together or use only 1/4 teaspoon – on the basis that the store bought self raising flour has 1 teaspoon of baking powder added to 1 cup of flour.

    UPDATE: I had the Baking powder and the Baking soda reversed in the reply. So sorry about it. Fixed now and please check the original recipe

  • am crying…..i would like trial ur cake…but here in indonesia, mostly use a metric measure…
    could u please transfer to metric….i dont have a cup measure….

    Here is a link to the conversion – The Metric Kitchen. Hope this helps and you are able to bake the cake 🙂

  • Hi Soma!
    I am new to baking, this might seems like a silly question. But can you please tell me which cup to use while measuring the liquid ingredients like the oil and buttermilk… I have already made this cake twice using only the dry ingredients cup for measuring all the ingredients. And it did come out well… Thanks for that!
    But I would still like to know for my baking knowledge when do I use the dry ingredient cup and the bigger liquid ingredient cup for measuring?

    1 cup would be a cup which holds 8 ounces of liquid. You can use this for dry and liquid measurements. The stores usually sell the cups in sets of 4 (1 cup, 1/2 cup, 1/3 cup and 1/4 cup). I do not use separate cups for dry and liquid ingredients. Hope this helps 😀

  • hi was going through the comments and I also want to use only AP flour. I think there’s an error though. at one point you’ve mentioned “2 teaspoons baking soda + 1 teaspoon baking powder + total of 1 teaspoon salt ( as opposed to the 1/2 teaspoon i have used)” and later on you’ve said “The original recipe with all AP flour had 2 teaspoons baking powder + 1 teaspoon baking soda for 1&3/4 cup ap flour.”

    i think the baking soda and powder have got mixed up. Could you please clarify? I want to bake it tomorrow! Thank you!

    Click on the Original Recipe (I have the link to it where it says the Double Chocolate Layer Cake). yes the original recipe uses 2 teaspoons baking soda + 1 teaspoon baking powder + total of 1 teaspoon salt. However since I used self raising flour (part) and it already contains some leavening and salt, I had to adjust the leavening. I reduced both the BS and the BP. If you are going to use AP flour, just follow the proportions of the original recipe and ignore what I did with the self raising flour. This was one ocassion where I had to use the SR flour and hence the adjustments. I have baked with the original recipe and it works well.

    and YES I wrote the reverse in the reply to the comment before yours. I will fix it right away. Thanks!

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