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Most chocolate cakes fail even before they come out of the oven. They're dry, they're over-mixed, or they use too many bowls. I'm Gemma Stafford, a professional chef with over 20 years experience in the business, and I'm going to show you how to make the ultimate chocolate cake that has a soft crumb, a rich flavor, and a shiny top. And it takes just one bowl and one minute for frosting. So welcome to the magical world of one bowl chocolate cake. It is the simplest, easiest cake to make with no special equipment and the best results. So into our bowl I'm going to add in some all-purpose flour, some granulated sugar, we call it caster sugar, and some cocoa. Now please use good quality cocoa powder. What we don't
want to use for this cake is Dutch process. You just want regular unsweetened cocoa powder. We are going to be adding in some baking soda to react with that to help the cake rise. So we need that acidity in the cocoa powder which Dutch process doesn't have. Dutch process is wonderful for so many things but not the best for this cake. And of course a little bit of salt. Anytime you're using chocolate in recipes, salt is key. Give those a stir together. What you can do for extra insurance is to sift all your dry ingredients together because cocoa powder is notoriously lumpy because it contains moisture from the cocoa butter.
You want to make sure there's no lumps in there. Now sticking with our one bowl we're going to add in our wet ingredients. Here comes a large egg. For all my baking I use large eggs. Next we are going to add buttermilk. So buttermilk is probably one of the best ingredients you can add into chocolate cake. The acidity in the buttermilk tenderizes the flour. Makes it incredibly soft, gives it a soft crumb. But also the acidity in the buttermilk helps to rise the cake because it reacts with the baking soda. So there's lots of reasons why that's in there. Also rather than adding a different liquid buttermilk is high in fat. So high in fat means high in flavor. And it has that lovely tang too which is really delicious. If you go to your
fridge and you realize you have no buttermilk and weren't planning on buying any, you can easily make your own. I've got a recipe on my website. Next we are going to add in some hot water. Now you're probably wondering why hot water and not just regular water. And what the hot water does is actually hydrates the chocolate. So when you think about cocoa powder being a dry form of chocolate, now you're getting like a wet, rich, dense, delicious version of the chocolate. And just so you know when you're adding in that hot water, if you want to add in a little bit of espresso powder just to bump up the flavors and really intensify the chocolate, that would be a really lovely addition. And then lastly we're going to add in some vegetable oil.
Vegetable oil adds moisture to cake. When you think about carrot cake, lots of our carrot cakes have vegetable oil. It makes the crumb very soft. What I like to do when I'm feeling a little bit fancy is add in the espresso powder. But add in very light olive oil instead of vegetable oil which adds extra flavor and extra nuttiness. It's really lovely and also a little bit more like salty. Now with our whisk, we're just gonna combine all these ingredients together.
Gonna break down that egg. Just mix your cake batter until you can't see any more flour. Be careful not to over mix because we do not want to toughen our cake. So come here to me Joey, you see those bubbles that are happening in there? That's because once you combine your cake ingredients it starts to activate and rise. Which means bubbles are starting to form, gases are starting to form. So what we want to do is get it into our pan. Now here I have a pan, it's 8x8 and it's buttered and lined. And what you want to do for this cake, because we're going to add the frosting in on top once it's baked, is give a little bit extra wall with the parchment paper because we
want the parchment to catch that frosting. So just go in with your batter. It is quite a thin batter because we added quite a lot of liquid in there. But more moisture in a cake, I mean that's what I'm going for. One bowl chocolate cake in a matter of minutes. Now like I said it's already starting to activate so let's get it into the oven. This little cake does not take long to bake. You want to bake it at 350 degrees Fahrenheit, 180 degrees Celsius for roughly 25 to 30 minutes. Just until it's perfectly baked. So when your cake is done, look how beautiful this is. I love because it's like a really dark chocolate color. You know when
it's done because it'll be firm underneath your finger top. This is a little bit of a stickier cake so it's nice and shiny on the top and a little bit sticky. That's all the moisture that we added in there. It's really delicious. Here's what we want to do. You actually want to frost this while it's still warm. So I'm going to set it over to the side, let it cool down a little bit. Our frosting takes one minute. We're going to make it, get it onto the cake and we'll be good to go. To make one minute frosting it's all in one bowl and we pop it into the microwave. So into this bowl I'm going to add in some butter,
some unsweetened cocoa powder. Use the same good stuff that you used for the cake and a little bit of milk. You can use any kind of milk that you like. Follow me over to the microwave. Microwave this mixture for around 45 seconds to one minute. You want the butter to melt and the mixture to bubble. Just note that my microwave is 1100 watts so your timing may vary. So once your mix is out of the microwave it'll look a little bit like this. We are going to add in our vanilla extract and sifted powdered sugar and then whisk it all together. So by hand just whisk your frosting until it is smooth. There we go.
Our frosting is smooth, it's thick, it is fudgy, it's ready to go. Fantastic. That's how simple it is. You can multiply this recipe to go over a bigger cake and what's actually really popular is to pour it over a sheet of brownies or like Texas sheet cake. It is so fantastic. So just go ahead and pour it over your cake while it is still warm. It's really important to do it while it's still warm because the warm cake actually helps to set the frosting so you get that lovely kind of crinkle top that kind of breaks underneath your fork when you cut into it. The heat from the cake will help set the frosting and also help to spread it out and lastly the benefit of putting it on while it's warm it actually makes the cake even more moist because the frosting
starts to melt into the warm cake. It's so delicious. Now just to finish it off before the icing sets for a little bit of pizzazz because even though it's a very simple cake it can also be kind of made a little bit fancy with some nice embellishments of some fancy gold sprinkles and I know this is a square 8x8 pan but just think about this for you know a small birthday party. It's like the perfect cake. Who doesn't love chocolate cake as their birthday cake? So this type of frosting actually needs some time to set. You can leave it out at room temperature for around two hours and it'll form a skin and kind of like harden almost like a shell or to make it go faster you can pop it into the fridge for a few hours. Either way we'll do the trick. When your
icing is fully set it's time to serve your cake. Yes it was made in one bowl with no special equipment. The icing took one minute but it also doesn't need any fancy decorating. The beauty of this cake is that it is simple and it can be decorated simply. Once you cut into that frosting you see that lovely thick cake underneath. It is a rich dark chocolate cake with a really soft tender crumb. Serve it at room temperature or you can even slightly warm it and add a dollop of whipped cream or ice cream on top. Cakes do not have to be complicated to be big and bold and that's exactly what this is. Well bakers I hope
you enjoyed this simple one bowl cake and one minute frosting. It is absolutely delicious and I hope you give it a try. If you want more baking videos just like this one then get comfy because I have hundreds for you to check out. I'll see you back here again really soon.
