This Chocolate Cake is a take on Hershey’s black magic chocolate cake and it’s one of the best cakes ever! Perfectly moist chocolate cake covered in the BEST white icing. This. Is. Sublime.
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Best Chocolate Cake with White Icing
This Black Magic Cake is a chocolate lovers dream. Simple and straightforward, this is one of those desserts that everyone will love. Coffee enhances the chocolate flavor and buttermilk helps make the cake super moist.
Why this is so good
- A perfectly moist cake. The cake batter is made with buttermilk and it delivers a spongey, moist bite every time!
- The BEST icing. This icing isn’t sugary sweet, it is delicious all by itself and it will turn any cake into the best cake ever!
- Easy to make. When it comes to delicious cakes this has to be the easiest, most decadent cake out there, plus the icing is so easy too. Simple ingredients, easy to assemble!
Ingredients
For the Cake
- All Purpose Flour
- Granulated Sugar
- Cocoa Powder
- Baking Soda
- Baking Powder
- Buttermilk: Room temp.
- Vegetable Oil: Or canola oil.
- Eggs: Large and at room temp.
- Vanilla Extract
- Coffee: Freshly brewed strong hot coffee or 2 teaspoons powdered espresso powder mixed with 1 cup boiling water.
For the Icing
You can use chocolate or vanilla frosting! Check out our faves:
How to make this Black Magic Cake
Be sure to see the recipe card below for full ingredients & instructions!
Sift the dry ingredients and mix in an electric mixer. In another bowl mix buttermilk, oil, eggs and vanilla.
Slowly add the wet ingredients to the dry in the mixer. Mix until incorporated. Then add the coffee.
Pour the batter into the cake pans and bake. Then top with your favorite icing, serve and enjoy!
What is a Black Magic Cake?
The Black Magic Chocolate Cake is originally from Hershey’s. In their words it’s…
“A moist and magical buttermilk chocolate cake recipe that will have your friends demanding seconds.”
And they aren’t wrong! It’s everything a great chocolate cake should be, moist, bursting with chocolate flavor and easy to make. Maybe that’s why it’s called black magic, something this delicious shouldn’t be this simple to pull together…
An easy chocolate cake recipe
This Black Magic Cake always gets rave reviews. Coffee is used to bring out the flavor of the chocolate – making it more prominent as opposed to flat and one dimensional.
This cake is so easy, essentially you pour your ingredients all into the mixer and then pop the batter into your pans of choice.
The result is the most decadent, moist, delicious cake that will ever grave your taste buds! It is full of luscious, rich chocolate flavor that blends harmoniously with so many icings.
The best white icing!
You can choose your favorite icing, but I have to tell you my mom’s is outstanding! I’ve linked to it in the recipe card.
I love this icing. It will take an ordinary cake to over-the-top yummy and is especially great when combined with chocolate or red velvet cake. This icing isn’t overly sweet and it will turn any cake into the best cake ever!
You can easily change up the color and flavor of this frosting. Try swapping the vanilla extract for lemon or orange or add in some cocoa powder. Add food coloring to make it perfect for any event!
Tips!
- Ideally use high quality cocoa powder. The darker the hue of the cocoa, the more satisfying the chocolate flavor will be.
- Ideally use shiny pans instead of dark pans. Dark can cause your chocolate cake to brown too early around the edges and create a hard crust on the surface and general dryness.
- When baking cake, you want your eggs and dairy ingredients to be at room temp so they can create an emulsion that traps air that eventually expands with the oven’s heat, for a lighter texture.
- Don’t over mix. Heavy mixing hand leads to tough cake textures. Instead, mix only until dry ingredients are 99.8 percent incorporated.
Other delicious cake recipes
- Velvet Chocolate Cake
- White Layer Cake with Strawberry Filling
- Blueberry Raspberry Coffee Cake
- Kentucky Butter Cake with Strawberries
- Pecan Pie Pound Cake
- Devil’s Food Cake
- Lemon Bundt Cake
Have you tried this Black Magic Cake? Feel free to leave a star rating and I’d love to hear from you in the comments below!
Chocolate Cake with BEST White Icing (Black Magic Cake)
Ingredients
- For the Cake:
- 1¾ cups all-purpose flour
- 2 cups granulated sugar
- ¾ cup cocoa powder
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 cup buttermilk room temperature
- ½ cup vegetable or canola oil
- 2 large eggs & 1 large egg white room temperature
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 cup freshly brewed strong hot coffee or 2 teaspoons powdered espresso powder mixed with 1 cup boiling water
- White Icing Click for our favorite recipe
Instructions
- For the Cake:
- Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350°F. Spray your chosen baking pan(s) with nonstick baking spray.
- Sift together flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt into the bowl of an electric mixer. Beat with paddle attachment, on low speed, just until combined.
- In a different bowl, combine buttermilk, oil, eggs and vanilla.
- Return the mixer to low speed and slowly add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Mix about 15-20 seconds just until ingredients are incorporated.
- Add the coffee and stir, on low speed, just until combined.
- Pour the cake batter (it will very thin) into the cake pan(s) and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
- Baking times for the 8-inch cake pans is 35-40 minutes, for the Bundt pan 50-55 minutes and for the 13×9 pan about 35-45 minutes.
- Top with your favorite icing. (Find our favorite HERE)
- Enjoy!
Last step! Don’t forget to show me a pic of what you made! Upload an image or tag me @thecookierookie on Instagram!
Becky’s tips
Nutrition Information
I SO wanted to be able to rave about this, but alas, I cannot. I made this cake and frosting for a brother-in-laws birthday yesterday and while everyone said they liked it, I thought it was fairly under-whelming. I’ve been baking for decades and while the cake was moist and certainly passable, I thought the flavor was a bit lackluster…and similar to other reviewers, I had real trouble getting it out of the pans in one piece. The real disappointment, though, was the frosting. I liked it before the flour/milk mixture went in (which pretty much dulled the flavor of the frosting and made it a bit, well, dull.) The thing I liked the least was a lasting slimy taste left in my mouth from the Crisco. I’d make the cake again, but not the frosting. I think if I had made a seven-minute stovetop vanilla frosting, I’d have really loved the combination.
I am sorry to hear it didn’t work out for you!
The frosting was so different. I loved it. I thought it was fantastic. I only had butter flavored Crisco, so I used that. I could not believe how the frosting didn’t melt or move BUT never got hard. Thank you for sharing.
So happy to hear that, Charlene!
The cake was spongy and looked amazing but it din’t come out of the tin. Got sticked in it. Don’t know what went wrong.
You’ll want to make sure what nonstick spray you’re using is best for the pan you bake in!
I mad this for my sistahs birthday celebration. My only issue is that I used cooking spray as directed and both cakes stuck to the center of the pans. Next time I will crisco and flour. I also used my moms buttercream frosting recipe. Xoxo thank you for the recipe 🥰
Oh no! Always go with your gut if you need to!
I want to make this cake the day before my son’s birthday party and ice the day of. Would you recommend refrigerating the cake or leaving it out?
Refrigerating it is best to keep fresh!
The cake recipe is a perfect 10. The cake was moist and delicious. However, the frosting recipe was disgusting and almost ruined the cake. It tasted like pure shortening, and separated. It was absolutely disgusting.I’m giving this a 5 because the cake recipe was just that good.
I am sorry you didn’t have success with the icing.
Would this icing work for cookies? Meaning Would it harden nicely enough to make cookies stackable?
It is a softer frosting and won’t completely harden!
If I could give this recipe a “6” I would!!! Your tips and comments were VERY helpful (thank you) because I absorbed them all. THIS cake was easy and absolutely delicious and beautiful. Lovely lovely color. My three 9″ layers were perfect so it was not too high and I doubled the icing recipe like you recommended (so there was plenty). Reading the comments, I was cautious on making the frosting —- but don’t read them, most didn’t give it a chance. If you want buttercream, then make butter cream frosting. If you want cream cheese, them make cream cheese frosting. But don’t be afraid to try this despite some of the discouraging comments (thinking some simply look for things to complain about). Read the ingredients and simply decide. I thought it was GREAT, not too sweet, and delicious chilled. Even BETTER the next day!!! Thank you BECKY, I was lucky to stumble over this recipe. SIX STARS!!!
That looks absolutely perfect and delectible! Thanks for sharing your success with us!
Thank you so much for this recipe. The cake was so moist and delicious, everyone complimented on it. This is one recipe I will be saving for future use. Thank you.
Thanks for stopping by and sharing, Rose!
I followed the directions; used the spray and shiny pans. I am now baking two more layers as the first two did not release from the pan. I will be oiling, using parchment and dusting with cocoa powder, as I know to do!
I am sorry it didn’t quite turn out for you!
All was not lost. Will be making cake pops with the scraps!
That looks delicous!