Chocolate Cake Recipes

I baked about 100 dozen cookies for the holidays and these were everyone's favorite!! ENJOY!!!

It is hard to believe in this day and age – when salted caramel ice cream is almost as ubiquitous as vanilla – that desserts in which salt plays a starring role was once a newfangled concept. Layers of silky caramel and dark chocolate ganache topped with a sprinkling of crunchy, snow-white fleur de sel make this an unforgettable combination of flavors and textures.

The year: 1983. The place: Williamsburg, Va., where representatives from across the globe — and “some of the biggest and brightest names on the American culinary scene” — gathered. The Times’s own Craig Claiborne planned the menus; Paul Prudhomme, Wolfgang Puck and Zarela Martinez cooked; and Maida Heatter provided dessert. Among her offerings were these, chocolate cheesecake brownies, “a formidable new creation” for the time. Here, a layer of pecan-studded brownie meets a sheet of chocolate cheesecake. Make them for a group — or for yourself to eat over time. They freeze well, and can just as well be served frozen.

A couple of years ago, my mother taught me to make her dense but moist chocolate birthday cake. She calls it 'dump-it cake' because you mix all of the ingredients in a pot over medium heat, then dumps the batter into a cake pan to bake. For the icing, you melt Nestlé's semisweet-chocolate chips and swirl them together with sour cream. It sounds as if it's straight from the Pillsbury Bake-Off, but it tastes as if it's straight from Payard. Everyone loves it.

Here is a homemade take on the Hostess Cupcake, the sweet, well-preserved treat that was lost, for a while, to the wilds of bankruptcy. They take a little time to make but are well worth it. (Don’t skimp on the Marshmallow Fluff!) Wrapping the finished items individually in cellophane allow eaters to experience the twinkly crinkle of childhood afternoons spent carefully removing the chocolate frosting from the cupcake’s top. But these are decidedly not the original. Whatever you do, make sure they’re stored in something airtight. They will dry out quickly.

Right or wrong I’ve always viewed the cupcake as a frosting transport system, and if you’re not a huge frosting fan (I’m not), then I figured, why bother? Then I remembered a friend had mentioned a recipe from Maida Heatter that was, in her words, a “grown-up cupcake.” I figured perhaps I owed the miniature confections a chance. Ms. Heatter’s recipe, modestly entitled, “Chocolate Cupcakes” from her 1974 book “Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Desserts,” produced a rich, moist crumb that relies on cocoa powder for its deep chocolatey flavor. But it’s her topping of semi-sweet chocolate ganache that separates these cupcakes from the crowd. No buttercream, no food coloring, and no diabetic shock after consumption. Just a really nice chocolate cake that’s a bit on the small side.

Minty Chocolate Cake Bites! Incredibly easy and perfect for the holidays. It’s made with ZERO artificial colors or flavors and ZERO high fructose corn syrup. Boom. Fudgy, sparkly, minty if you want them to be, perfectly stored in the fridge for an after-dinner bite-sized dessert or five…

This Mint Chocolate Chip Layer Cake is a mint lover's dream come true! Chocolate cake layers with chunks of Andes mints and mini chocolate chips, plus a silky-smooth mint buttercream with lots of flecks of mint chocolate chips. In this season of Thin Mints and green everything, I think you need this Mint Chocolate Chip Layer Cake in your life. It'll make you say “Thin Mint who?”

This stunning Chocolate Raspberry Mousse Cake has a moist, fudgy brownie base, three layers of light mousse—chocolate, raspberry, and vanilla, and then a glossy topping of chocolate and a tangle of raspberries and chocolate curls on top. Perfect for any occasion! If you can’t find quality fresh raspberries, you can use frozen to make the puree, and just omit the fresh berries in the mousse layer and on top. You could also substitute strawberries instead.

The cake starts with moist, delicious layers of chocolate cake. I used my Easy Moist Chocolate Cake from a couple of weeks ago in layered cake form. It truly is such a moist cake and so easy! You basically mix the dry ingredients, then wet ingredients, add them together, then add the hot water at the end. One of the quickest cake batters to make and hard to mess up. It is made with layers of moist chocolate cake, peanut butter frosting, and chopped chocolate peanut butter cups! It’s rich, delicious and so fun!

Vanilla Cakes layered with Vanilla Frosting, a Dark Chocolate Ganache Drip, & packed full of Mini Eggs – The perfect Mini Egg Cake Easter Showstopper! There is something so delicious about the simplicity of a vanilla cake, with a simple buttercream. You can even add 50g of cocoa powder to it to make it chocolatey! This cake also goes the extra mile because it has crushed mini eggs between the layers.

This rich and decadent spiced pumpkin cake is just the thing to serve for an autumn celebration, Thanksgiving or otherwise. Chocolate chips and chopped pecans are added to the pumpkin batter for extra sweetness and a bit of welcome crunch. For those who like to plan ahead, it can be made and frozen – iced and all. Just put the entire finished cake on a plate or a baking sheet, unwrapped, and freeze it overnight until it is hard. Then it can be wrapped without damage to the frosting, and returned to the freezer. Layers can also be wrapped well and stored, to be iced later.