Decadent Chocolate Layer Cake

This decadent chocolate layer cake is rich, tender, moist perfection! It's filled and frosted with fudgy chocolate frosting.

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I'm sharing one of my all-time favorite chocolate desserts: this decadent chocolate layer cake. I've never made another chocolate cake recipe after I discovered this one over ten years ago.

I was working as a pastry chef a large-scale bakery in the suburbs of Philadelphia. The bakery didn't have a store-front. They supplied desserts to local restaurants and hotels, and made the occasional wedding cake.

That meant that just about every batch of batter I was making yielded dozens of cakes. The ingredients were measured in double-digit pounds. "Scraping the bowl" meant rolling up your sleeves and getting elbow-deep in cake batter.

Generally, scaling a recipe up to double it or down to halve it, especially cookies, is simple and straightforward. Cakes can be a bit trickier, especially when scaling up to make 40 cakes at once, or scaling down a large-batch recipe to make only 1 cake, so it took a bit of perfecting before I was ready to share this with people making cakes at home.

The batter for this cake is very wet. Many chocolate cakes taste dry, because not only does the flour absorb moisture, but so does the cocoa powder. In addition, people tend to over-bake chocolate cakes. Unlike vanilla cakes, you can't get a good sense of doneness through color in a chocolate cake.

Because it is so wet, it's very likely to stick to the cake pan, so it's important to thoroughly spray with nonstick spray, use parchment rounds (instructions for making your own are included in the recipe notes) and spray the parchment with nonstick spray.

Now, if you've seen other cakes I've shared, you'll know I'm a huge fan of Swiss meringue buttercream. But with this cake, I like to frost it with a fudgy chocolate frosting. Swiss meringue buttercream can only take about 4 ounces of melted chocolate before it becomes too stiff, and that's not enough chocolate flavor for this cake.

That being said, this frosting is much softer, and doesn't hold up as well to piping decorations. That's why I added simple, slightly flat rosettes rather than the tall swirls you'd normally see me add.

Because this cake is so tender, I highly recommend baking it, cooling it, and then chilling it overnight before leveling and frosting. Trying to level this cake while it's warm will just shred it. Use a serrated knife to level the cake, using a gentle sawing motion.

This cake will serve 12 with generous slices, but it's very rich, so small slices will still satisfy, and you could get up to 16 slices out of the cake. To store this cake, I chill it for about 30 minutes to firm up the frosting, then cover the cake loosely with plastic wrap, and return it to the refrigerator.

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