Chocolate Layer Cake (2024)

This decadent chocolate cake is the only recipe you need. It’s moist and fudgy with a delicious chocolate flavor and can be adapted to a variety of pan sizes. Make it as a layer cake and decorate with chocolate frosting for the ultimate chocolate dessert

*This recipe was originally posted April, 2016 and updated May 18, 2021 with a slightly updated recipe, new photos & recipe tips**

The Perfect Chocolate Cake

This double chocolate cake is everything you could want. It’s:

• Extremely moist
• Slathered with creamy chocolate frosting
• Made with easy, everyday ingredients
• Rich without being sickeningly sweet

It’s the quintessential celebration cake for true chocolate lovers. It’s the perfect dessert that looks impressive and tastes even better.

The recipe is adapted from the famous Hershey’s chocolate cake recipe. The Hershey’s recipe uses pantry ingredients – which I love – and is extremely tender. However, I find it can get a little too sweet and sometimes it’s so moist that it’s almost sticky or gummy. Therefore, I’ve slightly increased the other dry ingredients to balance out the sugar, and slightly decreased the amount of liquid to ensure it’s not too moist.

Key Ingredients

While all the ingredients in this cake are important, there’s a few that I get asked a lot of questions about:

1. Oil. In this recipe, we’re using oil instead of butter because it keeps the cake tender and the cake stays moist for much longer than if using butter. Butter adds flavor to vanilla cake, but in chocolate cake, we don’t need the flavor from butter. So, oil is the way to go.
2. Buttermilk is key for making this cake extra tender with a soft cake crumb. In the recipe notes, I’ve included a substitution you can use with vinegar and milk.
3. Hot coffee intensifies the chocolate flavor. The heat helps the cocoa “bloom” – which means that the flavor intensifies. The original Hershey’s recipe uses boiling water, but I find hot coffee works even better. Don’t worry – you won’t taste it at all.

Making the Batter

The batter is made in 4 simple steps:

1. Whisk together the dry ingredients
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients.
3. Whisk the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. At this point, the batter will be quite thick.
4. Then carefully whisk hot coffee into the batter. It will be quite thin at this point.

You can either do this process by hand using a metal whisk, or with an electric mixer on a low speed.

Cake Pan Sizes for Chocolate Cake

• Two 8-inch cake pans will bake for 35-40 minutes at 350F degrees. This is what I used and what is pictured. If using 8-inch round pans, ensure that the sides are at least 2.5 inches (about 5 cm) tall – otherwise, they will overflow.
• Three 8-inch cake pans will bake for 30-35 minutes at 350F degrees.
• Two 9-inch cake pans will bake for 30-35 minutes at 350F degrees.
• A 9×13 inch rectangle cake pan will bake for 35-40 minutes. Grease the pan and lightly dust with cocoa powder. Divide the frosting recipe in half.
• For cupcakes – I recommend this recipe.

Note: You can see in the photo above that my cake pans have very high sides (this is needed if using two 8-inch round pans). I also used cake strips, which help the cakes to bake with a flat tops. If you have cake strips, feel free to use them. But don’t feel the need to go out and buy them if you don’t bake layer cakes regularly. See my note below about assembling the cake.

Assembling & Frosting the Cake

I like a thick layer of frosting on my cake. Whether you make this as a two-layer cake or three-layer cake, the frosting recipe below will be enough. (You may have a little leftover if you’re doing a 2-layer cake). My main tips for assembling and frosting this chocolate layer cake are:

• The cake layers must be fully cooled before frosting.
• If the tops of your cake are slightly domed, after the cakes are fully cooled use a serrated knife to gently saw off the rounded tops.
• Frost the cake on the same plate or stand that you plan to serve it on.
• If you notice that cake crumbs are getting into the frosting (this is especially common when frosting the sides of the cake), frost the sides with a very thin layer of smooth frosting then place the cake in the fridge for 1 hour (the frosting can stay covered at room temperature). This is called a crumb coat or dirty frost. Then frost the sides and top with a thick layer of swirly frosting. The thin layer acts as a seal to keep the cake crumbs in. You can see what I mean in the photo below.

At the end of the day – the cake is moist, perfectly chocolatey, and definitely not too challenging to make.

More Layer Cake Recipes to Love:

• Funfetti Cake
• Classic Birthday Cake – this is a yellow cake with chocolate frosting
• Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake
• Strawberry Layer Cake