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
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!
Cake was good, but terrible frosting. Bland.
I am sorry the frosting didn’t work out for you!
Excellent cake. Dark and moist. Terrible white icing. Maybe much LESS crisco should be used.
I am sorry the icing didn’t turn out for you!
Can this be turned into cupcakes?
I am sure you can! Just watch them closely as they bake and be sure to not over bake them!
This cake is amazing, however the batter overflowed and made a huge mess in my oven. The frosting is indeed the best icing ever.
Would you mind converting the cups into grams?
To make it easier for me?
Thanks in advance.
Recipe looks delicious can’t wait to try it.
And can I substitute buttermilk for milk?
There are plenty of sites that you can use to convert recipes into the measurements you use! Here is one https://www.thecalculatorsite.com/cooking/cups-grams.php
You can use 1 cup of milk and 1 tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice as a susbtitution.
Love this recipe. It was so light and delicious that even the non chocolate lovers loved it. It was a hit birthday cake.
Yay!!
How big is the cake by height? i don’t know which cake box to buy for the cake XD
It depends on what size cake pans you use. For a two tiered cake, it would be around 4 inches!