French Chocolate Cake
Rich, soft, and crumbly chocolate cake infused with Apollonia and frosted with dark chocolate buttercream frosting!
Ingredients
1 cup milk (250g)
1 stick butter (125 )
4 eggs
1 cup sugar (230g)
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2 tsp vanilla Extract
1 ⅓ cup all-purpose flour (200g)
⅓ cup corn starch (40g)
4 tbsp cocoa powder (30g)
1 tbsp baking powder (12g)
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½ tsp salt (2g)
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2 tbsp Apollonia N.29
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1 tbsp finely ground Turkish coffee (optional)
2 sticks butter, room temperature ( 230g)
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1 tsp vanilla extract (10g)
3 cup confectioner’s Sugar (360g)
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2 pinch salt
7oz dark chocolate chips (200g) or good quality bittersweet chocolate bar - 50% to 70% cocao
2 tbsp heavy cream
Chocolate Cake
Dark Chocolate Frosting
Directions
Chocolate Cake
- Preheat the oven to 350 F and set an oven rack in the middle position.
- Grease and line a 10” cake pan or a 9” springform pan with parchment on the bottom.
- Combine the milk and butter in a medium saucepan.
- Bring the mixture to a slow simmer, making sure all the butter is melted.
- Turn the heat off, do not let it reduce.
- In a stand mixer beat the eggs, sugar, and vanilla extract to a light and creamy texture, about 5 minutes. You can leave it unattended while you prep the rest of the ingredients.
- Sift the dry ingredients together into a bowl, if some of the coffee or spices are stuck in the sifter, just toss it back into the mix. You are just looking to break up lumps of flour and cocoa powder, not remove grounded spices.
- Away from the heat pour a third of the fluffy egg mixture into the hot milk mixture directly into the pan and whisk it together quickly to temper the warm milk and set aside.
- Into the mixing bowl, fold half of the sifted dry ingredients with the remaining egg mixture.
- Add the mixture from the milk pan and finish with the remaining dry ingredients.
- Continue folding gently until no no lumps remain.
- The egg milk mixture will look and feel very liquid but as the flour is added to the warm mix it will thicken and leave you with a rich fluffy cake batter
- Pour the batter into the prepared cake pan.
- Bake the cake for 35-40 minutes, or until a small knife inserted in the middle comes out clean.
- Allow the cake to cool for 15 min then unmold onto a rack.
- Let the cake cool completely before adding the frosting.
Dark Chocolate Frosting
- Make sure your butter is at room temperature
- Combine chocolate and cream in a small bowl, microwave for around 45-60sec.
- Every 20 sec give it a stir to help the chocolate melt evenly. Set aside to cool down
- Using the whisk attachment of a mixer, whip the softened butter, confectioner sugar, salt, and vanilla extract to a creamy texture. Scrape the sides of the bowl as needed.
- Add the cooled chocolate mixture to the butter cream and beat it for a couple of minutes, using a rubber spatula make sure to scrape the side of your bowl to incorporate all the chocolate into the frosting.
- Pipe or spread the frosting over the cooled cake
- ENJOY!
To make your own piping tip
- To achieve the look on my cake I created a DIY St Honore Tip out of my plastic piping bag.
- You can see below the look of the professional tip, you can easily recreate it by cutting a curve with a scissors a into your single use piping bag with a pair of scissors.
- As you pipe, keep the wide opening facing up and you will be creating a “mohawk” looking frosting decoration in no time.
Recipe Note
Recipe Notes
For an even more decadent cake you can always cut the cake in half to create two layers, increase the frosting recipe by 50% so you can add a layer of frosting in the middle
Questions? Contact Mymi@laboiteny.com
