Chocolate Velvet Cake
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This Chocolate Velvet Cake has the ideal balance of moistness while maintaining a light textured crumb structure. A perfect go-to chocolate cake recipe.
I just love the perfect texture of this chocolate velvet cake which comes to Rock Recipes after requests from several followers. They have loved other versions of this recipe in our Velvet Cake Collection.
However, this time many have specifically asked for a chocolate version of this popular cake recipe.
Other versions like our Lemon Velvet Cake and White Velvet Cake have been incredibly popular on Pinterest in particular. They've received hundreds of thousands of re-pins over the last several months.
Velvet Cake recipes have seen even more views on this website! Those recipes get consistently rave reviews too, making them among our most popular recipes from the last seven years on Rock Recipes.
Developing a chocolate version was a bit trickier however. Using melted chocolate was problematic because it affected the incredibly light texture of the cake.
Simply adding good quality cocoa could potentially make the moist cake drier. I opted for the cocoa route and experimented with using it to replace some of the flour in the recipe.
After a couple of attempts it worked like a charm.
The latest in a line of velvet cakes.
It makes a great addition to this collection of cakes and I've already started experimenting with dessert recipes using it, including a Chocolate Fudge Poke Cake that was a big hit at Sunday dinner this week.
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Chocolate Velvet Cake
This chocolate velvet cake has the ideal balance of moistness while maintaining a light textured crumb structure. A perfect go-to chocolate cake recipe.
Ingredients
- 1 cup sifted all purpose flour
- 1 ¼ cups sifted cake flour
- ½ cup cocoa
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- 1 ½ teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 ½ cups sugar
- ⅔ cup vegetable oil
- ⅓ cup vegetable shortening at room temperature
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3 large eggs
- 1 ½ cups buttermilk
For the Simple Vanilla Frosting
- 4 cups icing sugar, powdered sugar
- ¾ cup butter
- 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1-2 tablespoon milk
Instructions
- Sift together both flours, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, salt and sugar. Set aside.
- Grease and flour 2 nine inch round cake pans and line the bottom with 2 circles of parchment paper.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer beat together the vegetable oil, shortening and vanilla. Beat well at high speed with whisk attachment until light and fluffy
- Beat the eggs in one at a time.
- Fold in the dry ingredients alternately with the buttermilk.
- I always add dry ingredients in three divisions and liquid ingredients in 2 divisions. It is very important to begin and end the additions with the dry ingredients. Do not over mix the batter. As soon as it has no lumps in the batter, pour into the two prepared 9 inch cake pans.
- Bake at 325 degrees F for 30-35 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow the cake to cool in the pans for 10 minutes before turning out onto wire racks to cool completely before frosting.
To make the Simple Vanilla Frosting
- Mix together the icing sugar and butter until crumbly, then beat in the milk and vanilla extract until the frosting reaches a light spreadable consistency.
- If you want to frost the sides of the cake as well, I'd recommend increasing the frosting recipe by half or even doubling it if you want to pipe on borders or decorations for a celebration cake.
Recommended Products
Rock Recipes a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Our product recommendations are almost exclusively for those we currently use or have used in the past.
Nutrition Information
Yield
16Serving Size
12 -16 servingsAmount Per Serving Calories 507Total Fat 24gSaturated Fat 8gTrans Fat 1gUnsaturated Fat 14gCholesterol 61mgSodium 345mgCarbohydrates 71gFiber 1gSugar 54gProtein 4g
The nutritional information provided is automatically calculated by third party software and is meant as a guideline only. Exact accuracy is not guaranteed. For recipes where all ingredients may not be used entirely, such as those with coatings on meats, or with sauces or dressings for example, calorie & nutritional values per serving will likely be somewhat lower than indicated.
Hi Barry,
I cannot find cake flour in my little grocery store. It will be a week or more until I can visit the city to get some and I want to make this cake now!!! lol
What can I expect if I used all flour? Should I reduce the flour by a little bit? Any suggestions would be great! 🙂
Thanks for your lovely recipes Barry.
I've never tried it with all regular flour but it's worth a try.
Hi Robin! I regularly make several of Barrys velvet cakes using regular all purpose flour (when I'm out of cake flour). I just sift it really well and it turns out great. No difference in taste.
The cake flour is basically to soften the texture.
For every 1 cup of flour remove 2 Tbsp of flour.
Now add 2 Tbsp of Cornstarch for every 1 cup of flour. (replacing the tablespoons of flour taken out).
Sift 5-6 times and it's ready-to-use cake flour.
This doesn't really give the proper texture that the finer grind in a cake flour provides.
My family always request that I bake them Red Velvet Cupcakes when we have family gatherings. This would be a great dessert to make also. Thanks for sharing your recipe, I just pinned it.
How should I adjust the baking time if I want to make this recipe as cupcakes instead of a cake? Thanks!!
Cupcakes take 15- 20 minutes in my oven but always use the toothpick test to be sure; ovens vary. This may not be an ideal cupcake recipe, it is a very soft, tender cake.
What consistency is the batter? is it a thicker batter or a runnier batter?
I am making a zebra print cake for a friend's party and I would like to use the velvet cake recipes, because I'm thinking they will have enough body in the batter, but I just wanted to check.
I never thought about doing a Zebra Cake with it but the consistency of the batter would probably work well. Send me a pic if you make it. I'd love to see it. Might try that myself. Barry. barrycparsons@gmail.com
thanks! definitely will.
Hi Barry,
I made this cake recently and it was DEVINE!!! Lovely texture, my family devoured it. I however used a Chocolate Cream cheese frosting - worked really well together. My new favourite combination.
Thank you for your great recipes.
Helen
I don't think I've ever made chocolate cream cheese frosting. Sounds interesting.
Chocolate cream cheese icing is the BOMB! I use 2 sticks butter, 1 block cream cheese, 1 bag powdered sugar, 8 oz. melted unsweetened chocolate and voila!
Hows ya gettin on? Great easy recipe even though I had to make sever substitutions. I had to use all all purpose flour, sifted well, I also had to make my own buttermilk (milk and vinegar) and use salted butter on the icing. All said and done for everything turned out well and I will be using this recipe again. Good job b'y.
Hi Barry, I've tried your lemon velvet cake and it was amazing! I'd love to try this one for upcoming birthday. Is it OK to use marcipan coating on it? Can I cut the cake into more layers? Also, I'm from Europe and it's a poblem to buy a cake flour so I just replaced 5tbsp of all purpose flour with cornflour, it worked for lemon cake 🙂
I fond this cake to be quite delicate so I've never tried to split the layers or to weigh it down with a heavy marzipan. I don't think it's particularly suited to either but hey, if you're up for a challenge! 😉
First of all, thank you for your amazing recipes! I made the lemon velvet cake for my daughter's birthday and it was perfect. I am going to make a cake of half chocolate velvet and half vanilla velvet for my son's upcoming Star Wars themed birthday - so it shows the dark side and the light side when we cut into it. 🙂
What do you recommend when making a cake in advance, since I would like to make it the night before for a morning party? My plan was to bake it the night before, let it cool and do a crumb coat and refrigerate overnight - and then bring out in the morning and finish frosting, and leave it at room temperature after that. Or should I do differently to preserve the taste?
Sounds perfectly fine to me. I often bake velvet cakes a day ahead.
This actually works best to allow the flavors to meld... though, little compares to warm cake out of the oven! 😉
Hi,
Thank you so much for the recipe. Can I substitute the vegetable shortening with butter?
It may affect the texture of the cake. Let me know if it works.
At the risk of asking a stupid question, what makes a cake a "velvet" cake?
I think it comes from the soft texture.
Do you use Dutch processed cocoa or natural raw cocoa? Planning to make this cake 🙂
I use the dutch processed.
Hi Barry I'm Lisa from Philadelphia Pennsylvania I baked the lemon velvet cake today instead of using the shortening I used 1/3 cup of butter I will let you know how the texture was affected.
I will also try the other cake recipes
Thanks so much for sharing 😄
HI,Barry,just want to know what brand of cocoa you use,I live in Nova Scotia and I use Fry's cocoa,like to try a different cocoa.
I actually like the organic cocoa from Costco.
I’ve been baking for decades and this cake is DIVINE! I actually used it to make a full sheet cake, and while it was a bit crumbly it was RAVED about! I didn’t stack it. I used 4 batches per half sheet (12”x18”) baked at 300°F in a new, dark, non-stick Wilton pan. The first one I used all 4 batches and had a lot of run over but was done at 90 minutes. Somehow the second one wasn’t quite done at 95 minutes (I left it to my son to remove from the oven and he did so a bit early) even though I left about 1-1.5 cups of batter in the bowl. My husband said I will have to start working on a better icing (I’ve been using it for over 30 years!) so as to not detract from the amazing ness of the cake! Guess I’ve finally found “my recipe”
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!!
Oh, I used Hershey’s “special dark” cocoa because he wanted something richer than devils food, but not loaded like candy!
Glad it was such a success!
Hi Barry. I am baking three cakes for my daughter's wedding and have been trying many recipes. For the vanilla cake, my tasters and I liked your vanilla velvet cake recipe best. I am now going to try your recipe for chocolate velvet cake. I am not making tiered cakes, but want to make 3 layer cakes about 6 inches high. Do you think the velvet cakes are suitable for three layers? Thanks for the recipes!
These cakes should not be stacked without supports.