Moist Chocolate Cake with Coffee

Hot coffee is the secret ingredient that turns ordinary chocolate cake into something memorable. The heat blooms the cocoa powder, waking up the flavor compounds so the cake tastes more chocolatey, not more coffee-flavored. You won’t taste the coffee in the finished crumb. You’ll just notice the cocoa hitting harder than it has any right to.

The icing is the truly old-school move. This is ermine frosting, also called boiled-milk or flour buttercream, made by cooking milk and flour into a pudding-thick paste, chilling it, and beating it into creamed butter, shortening, and sugar. The result is a silky, less-sweet frosting that holds piped shapes and doesn’t grit out like American buttercream. It’s the original frosting on red velvet cake before cream cheese got popular.

Pro Tips

• The batter is meant to be thin. Don’t worry. The thin batter is what gives this cake its tender, almost fudgy crumb.
• Cool the milk-flour paste completely before adding to the creamed butter. Warm paste melts the butter and the icing breaks.
• Beat the icing the full 10 minutes. The texture goes from grainy to silky around the 7-minute mark.
• Wrap layers in plastic and chill before frosting if your kitchen is warm. Cold cakes shed fewer crumbs into the icing.

Variations

• Swap the ermine icing for a quick chocolate ganache for a glossier, richer finish.
• Add a tablespoon of espresso powder to the dry ingredients to push the coffee flavor forward.
• Layer with raspberry jam between the cakes for a Black Forest leaning version.