The Best Chocolate Cake recipe combines cocoa and coffee to create a chocolate lover’s dream. Add your favorite buttercream frosting to make it perfect! Keep reading to find out why coffee, buttermilk, and oil chocolate cake frosting important roles in this chocolate cake recipe.

And when birthdays roll around, I always feel like I really need cake. For birthdays, we have to do it up right by making my version of cake bliss. I need to swirl a pile of it on top, and then top it off with ganache just for the fun of it. I of course go a little overboard.

Is there any other way to be? A little bit of coffee blends amazingly well with the cocoa to create the most intense and delicious chocolate cake that you’ll ever taste. Coffee simply enhances the flavor of chocolate. In this cake, it deepens that rich, chocolatey flavor. If you are really opposed to using coffee, you can swap it out for water. 1 cup of water in place of the 1 cup of coffee.

In addition to adding an ever-so-subtle tang, the acid in the buttermilk helps keep this cake incredibly tender and makes for a moist chocolate cake recipe. If you don’t have any buttermilk on hand, simply use this buttermilk substitute and you’re golden! Since the combo of unsweetened cocoa powder and Dutch-process cocoa give this cake so much chocolatey flavor, we don’t necessarily need the flavor of the butter to compete or overpower the chocolate. Cocoa can also easily dry out cakes, so using a neutral-flavored oil in combination with the buttermilk makes sure both the chocolate flavor and moist texture of this cake really sing.

You can also bake it into chocolate cupcakes, though! You can get anywhere from 24-36 cupcakes, depending on how full you fill the tins. You’ll want to bake the cupcakes for 20-30 minutes. You might be wondering if you can bake this in 8-inch cake pans instead of 9-inch cake pans. Yes, you can, but you may have a little bit of batter leftover. Just be sure to start checking for doneness a tiny bit earlier than noted in the recipe card. My homemade buttercream frosting is a delicious way to top the best chocolate cake.

Rich chocolate cake paired with sweet vanilla buttercream? If you really want to play up the coffee angle, why not try using a coffee buttercream? And who doesn’t love chocolate and strawberries together? Top your chocolate cake with sweet strawberry frosting for a play on chocolate covered strawberries! I have even paired this cake recipe with chocolate ganache and salted caramel to make a Double Chocolate Salted Caramel Cake. The answer depends on how long you want to keep it and what kind of frosting you used.

Unfrosted cake can be stored at room temperature for up to 3 days. To make it last longer, you can tightly wrap and refrigerate the cake for up to a week or even freeze it for a few months. Chilled cake is actually a bit easier to decorate, so a lot of cake decorators prefer to work with cold cake instead of cake that is fresh from the oven. If you frosted your cake with buttercream, it can be stored safely at room temperature for up to 2 days. Store in the refrigerator if you want it to last longer, up to 5 days. I don’t recommend freezing frosted cakes. And remember, frosted cakes are their best the first day or two.