The Best Easy Chocolate Cake

Name: The Best Easy Chocolate Cake
Yield: Makes one 8-inch-square cake
Ingredients: 1 1/2 cups, unbleached all-purpose flour (7 1/2 ounces); 1 cup, sugar (7 ounces); 1/2 teaspoon, baking soda; 1/4 teaspoon, table salt; 1/2 cup, Dutch-processed cocoa powder (2 ounces); 2 ounces, bittersweet chocolate, chopped fine (see note); 1 cup, fresh black coffee, hot; 2/3 cup, mayonnaise; 1 large, egg; 2 teaspoons, vanilla extract; , Confectioners' sugar (for serving; optional)

90 comments

Appears in Cook's Illustrated March/April 2009

Desserts or Baked Goods

Chocolate

Cakes

This easy wartime cake made with mayonnaise had a lot of good things going for it. Chocolate flavor wasn’t one of them.

SERVESMakes one 8-inch-square cake

TIME1 hour, plus 1 hour cooling

has video

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS

We wanted an easy chocolate mayonnaise cake recipe that would deliver good chocolate flavor. To get there, we “bloomed” unsweetened cocoa powder in coffee to intensify its flavor and supplemented it with bittersweet chocolate. Although trad...

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