Chocolate Layer Cake with Fudge Frosting
A tall, dark two-layer cake with a coffee-deepened crumb and a ganache thick enough to hold its shape on the sides.
- Serves
- 12
- Prep
- 25 min
- Cook
- 35 min
- Written
Method
-
Butter and flour two 9-inch cake pans, then line the bottoms with parchment.
-
Whisk the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt together in a large bowl.
-
Whisk in the eggs, buttermilk, oil, and vanilla until smooth.
-
Stir in the hot coffee — the batter will thin out until it pours like heavy cream.
-
Divide the batter between the pans and bake at 350°F until a toothpick comes out with a few moist crumbs, 30 to 35 minutes.
-
Cool the cakes in their pans for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a rack and cool completely before frosting.
-
Heat the cream until it just starts to simmer, then pour it over the chopped chocolate and let sit for 2 minutes.
-
Whisk the cream and chocolate together until glossy, then whisk in the butter until the ganache is smooth.
-
Let the ganache sit at room temperature until it thickens to a spreadable consistency, 30 to 40 minutes.
-
Set one cake layer on a plate, spread with a third of the ganache, top with the second layer, then frost the top and sides with the rest.
Notes
The coffee doesn’t make this taste like coffee — it dissolves the cocoa’s bitterness and pushes the chocolate flavor forward instead of dulling it. Water works if you’d rather skip it, but the cake will taste flatter.
Frost it while the ganache is still soft enough to spread but no longer warm enough to slide off the sides — a spatula run under hot water smooths out any drag marks. Whatever’s left keeps well on the counter under a cake dome for three days.