Chocolate Cake

5 from 10 votes

This chocolate cake is super moist and so decadent. It's also incredibly easy to make and the best chocolate cake you've ever tasted!

Prep Time15

Cook Time30

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: American

Diet: Vegetarian

Servings:

Calories: 328kcal

Author: Alison

Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C) and prepare two 9-inch cake pans by spraying with non-stick spray and lining the bottoms with circles of parchment paper.
Sift the flour and cocoa powder into a mixing bowl and add the sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt and instant espresso powder.
Mix the homemade buttermilk by adding 1 Tablespoon of lemon juice to a measuring jug and then adding room temperature milk up to the 1 cup (240ml) line and letting it curdle into buttermilk.
Add the buttermilk, canola oil, eggs and vanilla to the dry ingredients and stir it into a thick batter.
Add the hot water and use a hand whisk to whisk it into the batter. You will now have a thin batter and this is perfect.
Divide the batter evenly between the two prepared cake pans and bake for 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of one of the cakes comes out clean.
Let the cakes cool in the pans for a few minutes before transferring them to wire cooling racks to cool completely before frosting.

Instant espresso powder is optional. It won't make your cake taste like coffee at all, but it does deepen and enhance the chocolate flavor.
You are welcome to use real buttermilk if you happen to have some on hand. But if you don't then you can make the homemade version and there will be no difference in the final result.
You can use vegetable oil instead of canola oil if you prefer.
Nutritional information is for 1 slice of 12 and is for cake only. The chocolate buttercream nutritional information can be found on that separate recipe.
Recipe adapted from Hersheys.