The Ultimate Chocolate Cake Recipe | Cupcake Jemma Channel

[Music] hello everybody and welcome back to the cupcake gemma channel and to the crumbs and doily shop here in soho sam and i came over earlier on today with some of the rest of the gang to have a tidy up and a clear out because we have just gone into lockdown 2.0 here in the uk um and i just feel like everyone needs a bit of a pick-me-up and i don't know about you but when i'm feeling down i need chocolate and i'm pretty sure that most of you will agree and if you don't agree then i kind of don't believe you because chocolate is key to making yourself feel better so today i am going to show you how to make the ultimate chocolate cake it is a chocolate mud cake i cannot really believe that we've got what like five six years through um videos without showing you this recipe is absolutely delicious you guys are gonna love it it's gonna have a chocolate sponge it's gonna have chocolate buttercream it's gonna have a ganache on the outside and it is decadent indulgent and it is sure to pick you up so we are going to start over here on the hob and in this saucepan i've got 250 grams of unsalted butter and into that we're going to add 250 grams of dark chocolate now i really recommend going for a 70 something really deep and intense and also some coffee so i've got 180 mls of coffee you can use fresh coffee if you have it fantastic if you don't you just want 180 ml of hot water and you're going to put two tablespoons of instant coffee granules into it now i know that a lot of you are gonna be thinking that you don't really like coffee can you substitute the coffee for something else but you have to use the coffee guys it's part of the recipe and it's not gonna taste like coffee coffee is great in your cakes and your brownies because it really intensifies the chocolatiness because it's kind of bitter and it just really makes it super super chocolatey so please do stick with it now what we're going to do is put this over a low heat and we're going to stir it all the time we don't want it to catch and burn on the bottom so just keep stirring until it has all melted [Music] so you might find that towards the end it looks like it's splitting a little bit that's because we've got water and we've got the fats from the chocolate and the um butter and they tend to separate but don't worry it will all come together in a little bit so we're just going to leave that to cool down slightly and in a large bowl you want to start by mixing together four eggs just to break them up [Music] and into that we're going to add 150 ml of buttermilk you can either use buttermilk or sour cream both are nice and tangy and they're going to make this cake even fudgier than it already is going to be but if you don't have buttermilk you can make a really easy substitute and i'll put a link in the description box below to a video that nikki did and she shows you a really great trick on how to make your own buttermilk so that's going to go into the bowl and we'll just whisk that together lastly into this bowl we're going for three tablespoons of oil i've got vegetable but you can use sunflower anything kind of flavorless give that a good mix and now it's time to add our chocolate mixture here so it's cooled down slightly but don't worry it doesn't need to be cold what i'm going to do is pour slowly and whisk at the same time to incorporate it all [Music] and this is already making me feel a whole lot better it smells amazing so now we'll go in with some dry ingredients starting with some caster sugar or granulated sugar and we've got 430 grams of that so just whisk that in [Music] [Music] and now i'm going to do the next bit through a sieve so into myself i'm going to put in 150 grams of both plain flour and self-raising flour and then on top of that we've got 60 grams of cocoa powder just to make this even more chocolaty and then we've got three quarters of a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda to give it a little bit of lift and then a good old pinch of salt probably around half a teaspoon going in there and now let's just sift this in and give it a good stir [Music] [Music] if you feel like it's looking a little bit lumpy with some like lumps of flour in there just go back in with your whisk and just give it a gentle stir we just don't really want to over mix it at this stage and now it is lovely and smooth we're going to put it into our tins so the recipe i'm giving you here is for a seven inch cake with four layers which i appreciate is enormous but i'm gonna give you a few different options in the description box below so that there is something for everyone you could do a two layer cake a one layer cake whatever you like so of course we need to grease these so i've got some cake spray here but you can do this with some butter and flour as well and now we just need to distribute our batter as evenly as we can between the four tins [Music] now before we bake it i'm actually just going to level out each of these because it's a very thick batter and it thickens really really quickly and this is a good way of making sure that you've got them all even as well so we're spreading them out and our tins are going to be about half full and now it is time to bake these so my oven is preheated to 170 degrees c that is fan assisted we're going to bake them for about 22 minutes doing the skewer test poking it in the middle of each tin because remember they might be a little bit unequal so one might bake and the other one's still a little bit gooey so make sure you test every single one until they come out clean [Music] okay guys so once your cakes have come out of the oven you want to let them cool down for five minutes only and then you're going to turn them out the tin if you let your cakes this goes for any cake cool down completely in the tin and then you turn the chin upside down and you try and get it out it's probably going to stick and it's going to crumble and it's going to break and it's going to make you cry so do not do that and then you want to let them cool down completely like i have with these and i've actually put each piece on a little bit of greaseproof because it means i can move it around much easier so now we're going to get on with making our fillings so before we make the actual filling which is the chocolate buttercream we're going to make our ganache stick on the outside so that it has time to sort of set and get thick so that we can use it so into this bowl well in this bowl i've got 100 grams of butter and i'm going to add 200 grams of chocolate now this time i've actually gone for a 50 chocolate because that's my kind of personal preference for ganache but if you want to go with the same 70 then by all means do that now usually when we make ganache in a microwave we'd put the cream in as well but a little tip for you here we want to make this nice and thick kind of straight away so we can use it straight away so i'm going to melt the chocolate and the butter together and then we're going to add the cream so i'm going to pop this in the microwave 30 seconds at a time until it's fully combined [Music] and now all we're gonna do is pour in 100 ml of double cream and then leave it to sit [Music] this shouldn't take all that long to thicken up so now we can get on with making our chocolate buttercream very standard simple chocolate buttercream starting with 125 grams of soft butter remember it has to be soft when you're making buttercream and we're just going to whip it up for about four or five minutes to make it really pale in color very creamy and very fluffy [Music] so into this i'm going to add a little pinch of salt and because buttercream is really really sweet so the salt just kind of kicks through that and salt and chocolate is a perfect combo so give that a little mix through and now we can go in with some icing sugar so i've got 225 grams of icing sugar which i've already sifted we're gonna put it in in two halves beating it really well between each addition [Music] i'm actually just combining my sugar and butter with a spoon first because icing sugar gets everywhere i'm just not in the mood to be covered in icing sugar today [Music] and last but obviously not least it's time to add some chocolate so i've got 80 grams of melted chocolate here again i've gone for the 70 but whatever you want to do is all right by me so we're going to put it in and fold it by hand [Music] this is the queen of the buttercreams it's absolutely delicious and it's taking all my willpower to not just dive straight in with my face first but now it is time to get our cake so first of all what we need to do is make them all lovely and level it's a pretty level cake anyway they don't rise kind of too rounded on the top but just to make sure we get it as level as we can i've got myself here a serrated knife or a bread knife um i tend not to do this with the leveller because we're not trimming the edges off the levelers can find it a little bit hard to kind of get in there so i prefer to use a knife so i'm just going to very gently slide my knife along the top doing nice big kind of backwards forward motions and turning my cake at the same time just to take that top bit of cake off so just spend your time on this doing a little bit at a time especially if you've not done this before just go nice and gently and whatever you do do not throw away your cake off cuts because they're a delicious snack and also it's the perfect cake recipe to be making cake truffles with and i figure we should probably show you guys how to do that so do stay tuned and i'll try and get a recipe together for you guys but in the meantime let's just get on and level out all of our cakes [Music] and now it is my favorite bit of an eating cake and that is decorating cake so you want to grab your turntable if you don't have a turntable do not despair as you could see when we were trimming our cakes we kind of had them on this paper which you can spin this is a really great way of sort of like not having a turntable but you know those lazy susans as well that you get that you put in the middle of your dinner table i don't actually really know what they're for but they make great turntables anyway let's get on with decorating so i've got myself a little board here you want to put that on top of your turntable and then you're going to grab some buttercream and as usual we're going to put a little bit in the middle of our board and that is going to stick down our first layer of cake so very gently grab your first layer and pop it in the middle of your board [Music] and now before we start filling with the buttercream you want to make sure the buttercream is really soft because if you put stiff buttercream on this cake it's going to pull all the crumbs away and it's going to be an awful mess so if you feel like your buttercream is a bit too stiff you can loosen it with a little bit of milk or you can pop it in the microwave for a few seconds at a time until it is lovely and soft so here we go a nice big dollop of chocolate buttercream [Music] now i've taken my buttercream right to the edge of my cake but i don't want too much to kind of splurge out because we're going to decorate it with the ganache and i don't want it to mix with it too much so once you've got it to the edge smooth it off and then we're going to put the next layer of cake on and when you're handling cake you want to be really careful that it doesn't crack so what i do is i make sure that i get as much of my hand on the cake as possible so that none of it's hanging off like this and you'll find that it's actually pretty easy to do and then we line it up and pop it on [Music] and then we just keep going until we get to the top [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] now before you put your last piece of cake on top what you want to do turn it upside down because this side is going to be much easier to ice than the crummy side so again line it up before you push it down just make sure it's all looking as straight as possible because you can shift it about ever so gently and there we go so now we're ready to decorate this but if you're somewhere warm or if your buttercream is just a bit soft and you feel like it's jiggling all over the place put it in the fridge for five to ten minutes just for that buttercream to set a little bit and you'll find it much easier to use the ganache on the outside so this is a really good consistency you can see here how it's kind of spreadable it's not just going to fall off and i'm actually going to do this with the bigger palette knife over here and i'm going to cover my cake with the ganache [Music] and don't worry too much about trying to get this smooth as we go we're going to smooth it off at the end or maybe you want to leave it rough that is totally up to you so i'm going to go on to the side and i'm going to do a little bit of ganache at a time because it's a lot looser than buttercream so i'm just using my palette knife but in the same technique as icing a buttercream cake pushing it backwards and pulling it forwards [Music] [Music] so like i said you can leave this as it is if you want but if you want to make it super smooth grab yourself a cake smoother now apologies guys i only have this short cake smoother here and i've made an incredibly tall cake but you can get tall ones of these over on cupcakedjammer.com we have got both the small and the tall so i would recommend having both because it is a lot easier to do this with the right size smoother but we'll just give it a go shall we [Music] so far so good [Music] so as you can see as usual i've got my scraper not scraping we're not scraping we are smoothing so i've not got it like this at like a right angle i've got it very gently sort of stroking the side of the cake because like i said we're not scraping we're smoothing and i'm using my turntable the whole time so i don't have to move my arm it's kind of easier [Music] and now we're going to move on to the top and this is when you want to grab yourself a bit of kitchen roll or a j cloth because we want to make sure that our scraper stays nice and clean so what we're going to do is cut the icing from the outside into the middle like so [Music] [Music] oh my gosh it is finished it looks marvelous it smells absolutely incredible i think we'd better cut into this and have a massive slice of cake because we all deserve it guys so here we go ready [Music] [Music] oh golly look at this i think i'm gonna have to lie it down on the world's smallest plate ah is there anything better in life than chocolate cake i don't think there is we've got the buttercream in the middle there and the ganache on the outside ready the best thing about a mud cake is the fudginess of it it is melt in your mouth fudge glove and if you want to make it even foggier i'd recommend making the sponge the day before leave it overnight and then ice it because it gives the sponge a chance to kind of relax and it gets even more moist it is divine and also if you don't want to faff around with making two different fillings and icings you can just choose one and fill in ice with the same thing delicious i hope you love making this cake and i hope you love eating it and i hope it makes you feel a little bit better because guys it's all going to be all right we're in this together we've got cake for you guys and we've got loads more recipes coming up and if there's particular things you want to see on this channel that we haven't done before always put them in the description box below because we love hearing what you guys want and we'll come up with recipes for you soon and obviously it is nearly christmas we've got our christmas selection heading out onto cupcakegemma.com um so do head over there along with all the tools and stuff which are going to make perfect presents if you've been eyeing up some turntables or any of the tools like the spatulas the scrapers put it on your christmas list because we've got all of it for you and we'll be back very soon with another recipe so enjoy this ultimate chocolate cake [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: CupcakeJemma

Views: 1,203,409

Keywords: Cupcake, cupcake jemma, jemma, gemma, cupcakes, bake, baking, how to make, recipe, crumbs & doilies, baker, buttercream, cake, cakes, vanilla, chocolate, jemma wilson, crumbs and doilies, bakery, perfect, easy, home made, hand made, simple, fool proof, dessert

Id: gzuKMqMaVYc

Length: 22min 26sec (1346 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 19 2020