Double Chocolate Layer Cake

This week has been brought to you by the letter "F," as in "I need to find a FREAKIN chocolate cake recipe that I'm happy with, dangit."






This is a great one. Baked it about two hours ago and just tasted it about ten minutes ago.





This might just be a personal preference thing, but I like to let chocolate baked goods rest overnight before really evaluating their flavor - they're always a little flat to me when fresh out of the oven. So even though I found the flavor of this to be almost a tiny bit flat, I'll reserve judgment until tomorrow; I'm sure it'll develop overnight. The texture is just plain dreamy - dense, heavy, still fluffy, and so moist. I love that the cake is almost black in color.

A gripe: As you can probably see from the second picture, the middle sank a bit. The recipe says to bake at 300 degrees for an hour or a little more. Mine actually took closer to 1:25 to bake. It may have been the oven, though. Either way: still yum. I think. Awaiting a verdict....*

Double Chocolate Layer Cake
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Double-Chocolate-Layer-Cake-101275

(I halved the recipe for testing purposes.. worked great. Half of this recipe makes a LOT of cake.. probably would've worked out to around 18 cupcakes.)

3 ounces semisweet chocolate
1 1/2 cups hot coffee
3 cups sugar
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups unsweetened cocoa powder (tempted to use a high-end, but too broke to justify it; used Hershey's Special Dark - RECOMMEND RECOMMEND!!)
2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
3 eggs
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
3/4 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Grease and lay parchment in the bottoms of two 9-inch round pans. (This is a sticky cake; definitely use the parchment.)

Stir the chocolate into the coffee until melted; set aside.

Sift dry ingredients together; set aside.

Beat the eggs until thick and lemon-colored, around 5 minutes. Combine oil, buttermilk, vanilla, and coffee/chocolate mixture; beat slowly into egg mixture. Add dry ingredients all at once and mix until barely not lumpy. Pour into prepared pans and bake for 1 hour - 1 hour 10 minutes.

Cool completely in pan.

(I didn't make the ganache frosting included with the recipe. Unless you're a major chocolate lover, I suspect the richness of the cake and ganache together would be way too much; it kind of makes me gaggy to think about it. But then, I am not a major chocolate lover.)

*Verdict: WIN. Keeper.