Easy Chocolate Cake Recipe That Turns Out Every Time

Today I'm going to show you how to make this chocolate cake that's so easy, even if you've never baked anything in your life, it's still going to turn out perfect. With just one bowl and hardly any effort at all, you're going to bake a cake that turns out perfectly soft, moist, and super chocolatey. You almost can't mess it up. So the first thing you need to do is preheat your oven to 350 Fahrenheit, and you want to grease two 8-inch cake pans and line them with parchment paper. So I just rubbed the insides with some butter, and I always like to use the paper that the butter comes in. It always has some leftover butter on it, and this is a good way to use it a lot. And then I put this circle of parchment paper on the bottom. That's going to guarantee that your cake comes out perfectly. So I'm going to start by weighing out 210 grams of flour. That's one and three quarter cups. That's the one ingredient I actually like to weigh because if the flour is just a little bit off, it can mess up the whole recipe. Next, I'm going to add a cup and a half of sugar, three quarters of a cup of unsweetened cocoa powder, one and a half teaspoons of baking powder, one and a half teaspoons of baking soda, and some salt. So just go ahead and whisk this together. Just whisk it all up until it looks like it's one color. The thing I love about this recipe is everything is done in one bowl. You don't even need your electric mixer. All right, so now we're going to add one cup of milk, and this is room temperature milk. It's really important that all your ingredients are at room temperature. Next, I'm going to add two eggs. Give that a little whisk. Now we'll add the second egg. Whenever I add eggs to a recipe, I kind of like to mix them in one at a time. Now I'm going to add half a cup of oil, a teaspoon of vanilla. So just kind of stir that in. And now right here, I have one cup of boiling hot coffee that I'm going to stir in. Whoops, almost got the granules in there. I didn't realize that was so grindy. And now just stir this together. Now you don't have to use coffee. You can just use boiling water if you want to, but the coffee really does enhance the chocolate flavor. You're not going to taste the coffee at all. You're not even going to know it's there. It just kind of does something to improve the chocolate flavor. So don't be alarmed. The batter is going to be very thin. It's supposed to look that way. Now I'm going to divide this as evenly as I can among the two pans. Just trying to get them very even. I don't think they have to be perfect. All right, I think that looks pretty good. Look how watery they are. Wow. Now I'm going to go bake them for anywhere from 30 to 35 minutes. You'll know they're ready when you can press on the middle very lightly and it kind of springs back. And of course, you can also do the old toothpick test. If it comes out clean, then you know it's done. These look so good and it smells phenomenal in here. So you're going to want to let these cool in the pans for at least 10 minutes before you try to take them out at all. They're really fragile right now and they're technically kind of still baking. So after about 10 minutes, when you think that they're ready to kind of hold their shape, that's when you can take it out of the pans. Best way to do that is to actually run a knife around the edge and then just kind of do your best to take it out. It'll come out very easily. I like to do it from the both sides like this. And you can see that because of that parchment paper, it's so easy to just take it out of the pan. So these have to cool completely before you can frost them. While that's cooling, let's make the frosting. Right here I have a mixture of half a cup of melted butter with two ounces of unsweetened chocolate. And what I did was just melted them together over the stove until they were nice and smooth. If you don't want to use unsweetened chocolate, you can also use two thirds of a cup of cocoa powder. So I'm going to add this mixture right into a bowl. You could also melt these together in the microwave. I'm going to add a little salt. Now I'm going to add two cups of icing sugar. We're probably going to need a little bit more. And about a tablespoon of milk or two. I am going to use the electric mixer for this, but maybe I should just get it started like this first. Probably a good idea. All right. And now you just have to add enough icing sugar to make it the consistency you want. And one last ingredient, a teaspoon of vanilla. So I think this is going to finish the icing. Now if for whatever reason your icing got too thick, then you can always thin it out with a little bit more milk. So I think I'm just going to do that. And that right there is looking perfect. When you are ready to frost your cake, one thing I like to do is just set these strips of paper around the rim. That's going to help keep the frosting off the plate. Now I'm going to take a pretty good amount of the frosting, you know, about a third or so and put it right in the middle. And don't worry if your frosting kind of sticks out on the edges. That's going to get taken care of. And I think I'll put this one on upside down. It's going to give us a nice flat top. And this cake feels so soft, even though it's completely cooled. And you can see how that parchment paper really helps to keep the plate clean. Now once all your frosting is on there, make sure to do a few nice decorative swirls. And that frosting recipe yields just the right amount for this cake. I just know that when you make this, you're going to be so impressed. For something that was so easy and all made in one bowl, you're going to be amazed at how chocolatey, fluffy, and moist it turns out. I'd say way better than a bakery chocolate cake. Don't forget the full printable recipe link is in the description under the video. And if you enjoyed this one, please let me know by hitting that like button. Now go bake yourself up one of these beauties, and enjoy!