Espresso Buttermilk Chocolate Cake

After being out of town for work for 4 of the past 6 weeks, I’m super happy to be back home and to be staying here for a good while. I love traveling and meeting new people, but there’s nothing that compares to the comfort of your own home. Sleeping in my own bed next to Jeremy with the dogs curled up at my feet, hanging out with all our friends, catching up on yard work and getting my hands dirty out in the garden—I have my roots here, and it feels so good to be able to feel firmly planted and stationary for a bit! Jeremy and I are catching up on remodeling the garage (soooooo close to the finish line with this project!), and I’m working on a separate fun little project for you all that I hope to have ready by the end of November. Will keep you posted!! 😀 And now it’s time to share this amazing chocolate cake with you all.

I came to making this cake via my awesome friend Annabel. She’s from the Melbourne area of Australia and gifted me this *insanely* delicious Australian cookbook called Phillippa’s Home Baking, and in it was a recipe for chocolate buttermilk cake that sounded + looked out of this world (I was immediately sold by the accompanying photograph of a barely-visible single layer of cake nearly completely coated in melty chocolate ganache). I decided to try my hand at it, but made it a bit larger to create a multi-tiered cake instead of a single one (why have only one chocolate cake when you can essentially have three???), and added a little espresso to it just ’cause. And by ’cause I mean because espresso and chocolate taste absolutely bonkers good together.

So, I dove into the chocolate cake recipe, converting all the Australian measurements to American ones, and crossed my fingers that it would come out okay after all the conversions. It looked fine after I took it out of the oven, but the real test came after I finished taking pictures of it and got to sit down and dive right on in. And good LORD. It was so, so, SOOoooOOoo good. Dense. Moist. Rich. Fudge-y. Decadent. Mouthwatering. Pretty much all the adjectives that can apply to the perfect chocolate cake. This is now my new go-to chocolate cake recipe, and I hope that it becomes yours, too!!

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Espresso Buttermilk Chocolate Cake

Course Dessert

Prep Time 30 minutes

Cook Time 45 minutes

Cooling time 15 minutes

Total Time 1 hour 15 minutes

Servings 1 8-inch cake

Author Eva Kosmas Flores

Ingredients

Chocolate Buttermilk Espresso Cake

• 4 cups flour
• 1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon Dutch-process quality cocoa powder (sifted)
• 1 tablespoon espresso powder (aka ground espresso coffee beans)
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon flake sea salt
• 9 ounces butter (softened)
• 2 3/4 cups granulated sugar
• 4 eggs
• 2 1/3 cups buttermilk

Salted Chocolate Sauce

• 2 sticks butter (8 ounces)
• 17 ounces bittersweet chocolate
• flake sea salt to taste

Instructions

Espresso Buttermilk Chocolate Cake

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. grease (3) 8-inch cake pans and line the bottoms with parchment paper. Set aside.

2. In a large bowl, stir together the flour, cocoa powder, espresso powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt until combined. Set aside.

3. In the bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugar at medium low speed until smooth and fluffy, about 2 minutes, pausing once to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

4. Add half of the buttermilk, then half of the flour mixture, and mix at low speed until nearly combined. Then add the remaining buttermilk and flour mixture and mix until a smooth batter forms.

5. Evenly distribute the batter between the three cake pans. Place in the oven and bake until the cake pulls away from the sides of the cake pan and a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out relatively clean, about 45 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 15 minutes before inverting the pan onto a wire rack, removing the cake from the pan, and allowing the cake to cool completely.

6. Once completely cooled, if needed, use a bread knife to cut the dome off of two of the cake layers so that they are flat at the top, rather than dome-shaped. (Enjoy this dome bit for pre-cake slice snacking).

Salted Chocolate Sauce

1. In a small thick-bottomed saucepan, melt together the butter and chocolate until smooth, stirring constantly.

2. To assemble the cake, place one layer of the cake on the serving plate and drizzle 1/3 of the chocolate sauce over it. Place the second cake layer on top and repeat the drizzling. Place the third and final cake layer on top and repeat the drizzling once more. Sprinkle with the desired amount of flake sea salt and serve.