hey I'm John canel and today on prey kitchen we're making a decadent delicious chocolate cake so let's get started first off set your oven to 350 so it's nice and hot grab two 9in baking pans spray with baking spray or some butter the parchment paper is your guarantee that the cakes will come out neatly with no cracks no tears now into a large bowl I'm adding 2 cups or 240 G of allpurpose flour it's very important that you don't add too much flour so either use a scale or fluff the flour up and sprinkle it into your measuring cup then level it off if you just scoop the flour up with a measuring cup and level it off you're going to add 40 50 60 70% more flour and your Cake's not going to be nice and soft and moist it'll be like dry and bready 2 cups of granulated sugar that's 400 G perfect the sugar is going to make everything sweet of course but it also makes your cake soft if you reduce the sugar in a cake yes it'll be less sweet but it's going to get harder and Breer it's going to lose that wonderful soft consistency we love my chocolate cake needs chocolate so half a cup or 50 g of cocoa powder today I'm using a natural cocoa powder but you can use a Dutch processed as well to fluff things up you need a leaver so 1 and 1/2 tpoon of baking powder and 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of baking soda baking soda needs an acid to react to otherwise it doesn't work as well so the acid we have here is the cocoa powder natural cocoa powder is slightly acidic it'll react with the baking powder soda and give us a puffier cake and finally Force imbalance I want half a teaspoon of kosher salt and if I'm ever making a dessert it needs to have some salt for balance you cannot taste things unless the salt is there it doesn't have a flat sweet note right give this a sift if you're wondering why we sifted this is why all rocks of cocoa powder inside sometimes any ingredient can Clump up even baking powder but the cocoa is the main culprit and nobody wants to bite into like a little nugget of pure cocoa powder no press those through my scale is done grab a whisk and we're going to mix this up so just give that a really good mix the sifting started the mixing but now you want to get everything nicely distributed if you've ever had a cake that had these weird little divots or like a crater guess what didn't get distributed the baking powder or soda so that's why part of it just didn't rise up we want every bite to be perfectly puffy and a nice combination of cake and buttercream nice and mixed up onto the wet ingredients so grab another large bowl and you have a choice here you can either use one cup of boiling water which I'm going to do today because I have little children who are going to have this cake or you can use one cup of hot coffee it could be an espresso mixture or whatever you'd like the coffee will really really let you taste the chocolate more it'll amplify the chocolate flavor but I'm not going to do that today because Lin and George have enough energy as it is I set some water to boil in a kettle we'll use that in just a moment but now in a medium Bowl I'm adding half a cup of Veggie oil if you're wondering why we're using vegetable oil it's because it'll keep our cake pillowy soft even if it's coming straight out of the fridge if you're using butter it'll be very hard until it's completely room temperature also the taste of butter will be lost in a chocolate cake to the oil I'm adding 1 cup or 240 Ms of whole milk and one table all right and 1 tbspoon of vanilla extract I'm using the last of this batch whisk that up until it's nice and smooth but don't forget as I almost did to add two large eggs room temperature please one and two I'm such a sucker for this light blue eggshell color oh my gosh so pretty okay now give that a whisk the eggs should have gone in first but it's totally fine it does not matter at all as long as it's nicely whisked okay grab that dry mixture back and we have two things to do first off we're going to add our wet mixture in but do not forget we have that boiling water at hand too whisk that up until it is almost combined it's okay to see a couple streaks of flower hither and thither I'm reading the wind and the Willows with my kids like every night we read a few pages of it and I love that book as a child it was like one of my core memories but I forgot how in 19 century the languages they literally do say hither and thither and so many other words it's like an exercise and sat words this looks delicious but we're going to add one cup of boiling water and that water is going to add more moisture and also activate the cocoa powder and let it just get more intensely chocolatey measure that out I can't eyeball that all right I'm going to pour this in as I whisk and here the batter will be running don't worry about that all that means is it's going to be a magical delicious batter this is similar to a devil's food cake it's giving some devil's food Vibes see super runny but that's okay so everything is ready it's time to divide this evenly in your pan I'm pulling my scale back because it's my best friend it'll tell me exactly how much batter is going to be divided if you want to eyeball it just use a toothpick and you can kind of use it like a like a little depth meter it'll tell you exactly how much there is height-wise all right into the pan I'm making this cake with two 9in layers but you could make it with three 6in layers or three 8 in layers the 6inch layers will be really thick if you make three 8 in layers they'll be about an inch thick so thinner but still delicious okay it's about 700 g per pan make sure you zero your scale out before you add the batter in my cakes are ready to go into the oven 350 for about 35 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean and don't worry about using cake strips this batter is so thin it doesn't need them then you go my cake layers are cooling so now we're going to make an amazing delicious chocolate butter cream starting with three sticks or 1 and 1/2 cups or 338 G of unsalted butter at room temperature this should be nice and soft so I can use my finger and press in it goes really easily and it's going to cream up very quickly cream this on medium for about 30 seconds just until it's silky smooth and today I'm using my stand mixer with the paddle attachment but you can definitely use a hand mixer if desired let that cream up and in the meantime I have 6 cups or 680 G of sifted powdered sugar no lumps for your cake and my cocoa powder is ready to use H this is natural cocoa powder I'm actually going to use a Dutch processed one just so it's extra dark and chocolatey looking if if you use natural cocoa powder it's going to taste great but it'll be a light chocolate color which bothers me for some reason so that's much better look at this difference in color it'll be a nice dark Rich fudgy buttercream of course this is pure rocks of cocoa powder look at this so we're definitely going to need to sift this out and I'm going to use 1/4 cup or about 25 G if you want to use more you can use more it's totally toaste all right into my sifter don't make a mess don't make a mess don't make a mess there we go I'm just going to sift this out so there's no lumps of cocoa powder that's all done cream this up one more time on low so the cocoa powder mixes in without creating a giant messy cloud and once it's Incorporated we're going to scrape the bowl down this looks like chocolate delicious this to me but for you plain old sad butter mix it up scrape it down and look at this unmixed nonsense that's horrible we never want that whenever you make a frosting I hope you play with the recipe a little bit the recipe is like a standard you know it's going to be delicious but you can make it your own for example you could swap out half a cup of butter for half a cup or 4 oz of cream cheese Mah it'll be delicious I would definitely add less cream though cuz that's adding water in you could use some sour cream sub that in for the butter or for the cream and then you could add spices to it too Mexican hot chocolate buttercream cinnamon little Cayenne ooh it's going to be really good one thing that's non-negotiable for this is the salt I'm adding in a generous 1/4 teaspoon I like it a little bit extra salty it's going to make the biggest difference it'll really let the chocolate Pop you could also add in 1/4 teaspoon of espresso powder if you're going the coffee root to amp up the chocolate flavor okay the time has come for us to add the powdered sugar in I would add a cup or two at a time and mix on low you don't want to have a giant mess there we go as the powdered sugar mixes in you can alternate with like a tablespoon or so of milk or cream it's up to you here or sour cream and by the way if you're in the spirit this milk doesn't have to be milk this milk could be Brandy dark rum or whiskey it's a totally different vibe but you can incorporate any flavor you want so whatever liquid you want to use is going to work here it could even be coffee and you would make it like more of a mocha cake ooh this is looking really nice keep going with the powdered sugar more powdered sugar more liquid whatever you want and as you go make sure you scrape the bowl down the top is going to be sweet and chocy and the bottom is going to be totally just pure cocoa powder and butter with salt so you really want to have a nice even mixture so every bite of the cake is uniform scrape the bowl down and remove everything from the beater because stuff collects there and it doesn't get mixed properly especially the top these are things I wish someone had told me when I was a little baby Baker or maybe my mom did and I didn't listen last third of the powdered sugar mix on low add the milk a lot of people complain that American buttercream which this is is like too sweet and it's grainy and gritty and dense that can definitely be the case it actually has to do with how you whip the butter and sugar together and how how much liquid you're adding a lot of it's just not made correctly but a chocolate American buttercream is going to be delicious you can sub out some of the butter for sour cream for cream cheese you can do like so many different things to it but adding the salt in adding the milk in is going to make it creamy and perfectly balanced if you're totally set against it you know it's not for you make a Swiss or Italian buttercream click up here for my Swiss buttercream video and then just add in melted chocolate to taste oh my gosh it is perfection all my sugar is incorporated I'm going to add 1 teaspoon of vanilla in it's optional but it's a lovely depth of flavor and the last little bit of milk so I'm using a full4 cup here always make your chocolate buttercream a little more slack than you think it should be because it sets up the cocoa powder just absorbs liquid and it kind of just will set quicker than you imagine we're going to mix this on medium for 1 minute until it's light and fluffy and in the meantime I'll grab a cake plate get my cake layers and we're going to decorate this [Music] up my cake layers have cooled completely they're pillowy soft and they smell amazing invert this onto a cake plate that remove the paper don't forget very important and now we're going to add about 1 cup of frosting right in the middle my gosh this looks so good spread the frosting out into an even layer moving it all the way to the side for the middle it doesn't matter as much because no one can see it pop the next layer on just like that now cover with the remaining frosting if your frosting is it all bubbly or set up just run your mixer for 30 seconds and you can add in an extra tablespoon of cream or milk if desired smooth it out and work the frosting down the side and here you can decorate this cake however you'd like totally up to you you'll use every last drop of frosting from this so do not snack too much just one spoonful is all you're allowed once covered completely swoop to your heart's content or you can smooth it out top with sprinkles chocolate chips chopped chocolate cacao nibs anything you love the nice thing about swooping frosting is you can create the illusion of abundance and like so much frosting with all that depth that you're working in even though it's almost paper thin in spots so you're using a proper amount of frosting it's not excessive but looks so beautiful give your cake a slice and it's ready to [Music] enjoy that is Silky fudgy but it's still light the cake is Fluffy but so moist it's an amazing chocolate cake so I hope you get a chance to make this recipe and if you like this video check out my chocolate playlist [Music]