The Best (and easiest) Chocolate Cake You’ll Ever Make
Well, the holidays are here!! If I’m being honest, the holidays are not the holliest jolliest, favorite time of year for me. People get too stressed out, money gets tight, the days are so short, and my favorite 90s soft rock radio station started playing exclusively Christmas music before Thanksgiving. That being said, I’m no Scrooge!! And there are some things about the holidays that I really can get behind. Mainly the overabundance of desserts.
A few months ago I was asked to cater the desserts for a private school fundraiser event. They wanted something rich and expensive feeling to lube their patrons into spending more on the silent auction. One thing came straight to mind…kladdkaka. If you’ve never heard of it (I’d be more surprised if you had heard of it), kladdkaka is a Swedish single layer chocolate cake. Similar to the flourless chocolate torte we all know and love, but slightly different and better, in my opinion. Kladdkaka has a small amount of flour which makes the cake more like a fudgy brownie, and traditionally it’s slightly underbaked so it stays soft and almost runny in the center. It is…simply divine.
When you think of holiday desserts, a chocolate cake may not be the first thing to come to mind. But I beg the question, why not?? We’re all pumpkin spiced out by this time of year anyway, why not turn to something guaranteed to boost our dopamine? Our beloved hero, Chocolate.
This cake is SO simple to make, and that might be my favorite part about it. You can pretty much make it in one bowl, no stand mixer required! I bake it in a 9” spring pan, which I would recommend using because it can be a bit tricky to remove otherwise. Ok, enough chit chat here’s the recipe
150 g butter (about 2/3 cup)
150 g chopped dark chocolate (about 2/3 cup)
75 g strong coffee or espresso (about 1/3 cup)
3 egg
150 g brown sugar (about 2/3 cup)
60 g flour (about 1/2 cup)
30 g cacao powder (about 1/4 cup)
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
Ok, one more note before we move forward…the recipe that I use is written in grams, in fact every baking recipe that I use is in grams, and if there’s a recipe I like that’s not in grams I will usually convert it. Baking, as we all know, is a science. And scientists use scales, if you are interested in baking in even the smallest capacity I would HIGHLY recommend getting a kitchen scale!! Every professional kitchen in the world uses the metric system and weighs their ingredients because it’s just so much more streamlined and accurate! Trust me, if you start weighing you’ll never want to go back to measuring cups again. That being said, I did include the volume conversion for this recipe because I don’t want someone to not be able to whip this cake up right now due to lack of scale. However, I can’t guarantee it will come out perfect because the volume ratios aren’t exact. Ok let’s continue.
Melt the butter in a saucepan (or microwave). If you want to feel like a real pro baker you can use a double boiler here, aka a glass or stainless steel bowl over a pot of simmering water. However if you’re careful and use gentle heat you can just do it in a saucepan. I mean gentle heat!! You don’t want your butter or your chocolate to burn, so stir or swirl the butter consistently until it’s fully melted, then add in your chopped chocolate. I used half 70% dark chocolate and half Tollhouse chocolate chips. Use whatever kind of dark chocolate you like.
Add the coffee to the melted butter and chocolate. I used instant espresso powder mixed with hot water. I like to make it strong. The flavor of the coffee helps to bloom the chocolate and bring out the most rich chocolate flavor.
Whisk together the eggs, brown sugar and vanilla and stir into butter/coffee/chocolate mixture.
Lastly add salt and sift in the flour and cacao powder. Gently mix with a spatula to combine.
Pour in a parchment lined, buttered 9” spring form.
Bake at 325° for 15-20 minutes. Remove from oven when the center of the cake is still slightly jiggling. Let that baby cool, and enjoy!!!
There are so many lovely ways to top this cake. I’ve served it covered in a warm pool of salted caramel (pictured above), that was delicious. For the fundraiser I served it with a whipped caramel cremeux, which is a caramel custard of sorts. If you’re a real chocoholic you could top it with a chocolate ganache. A vanilla creme anglaise would be divine. It is also lovely finished with a nice simple dusting of powdered sugar or cacao powder.
