The Benefaction of the Best Chocolate Cake

Feast On Your Life is out in the world! A cake recipe with which to celebrate.

Feast On Your Life came out last week! I had great and illuminating conversations with Shaina Loew-Banayan, Malcolm Gladwell, and Lacey Schwartz Delgado. The book landed on wonderful best-of lists.

To celebrate, I’m replying to a query that was not a plea for advice. It may not even qualify as a query. It was more of a comment…or perhaps a complaint.

Dear Ms. Adler:

I read your recent article in Vogue Magazine entitled “What Does It Actually Take to Make the Best Chocolate Cake in the World?” It was a nice article. But there doesn’t seem to be a single photo of chocolate cake—not the original cake that provided the seed for your story, nor the 11-layer cake you described in the article’s final paragraph, nor any other chocolate cakes you encountered along the way! You write that everyone loved your final cake. I have no doubt. And yet no actual photo of any chocolate cake. I am perplexed by this.

-Where’s the Cake?

Dear Where’s the Cake,

Thank you for reading the Vogue piece. I sometimes wonder whether anyone reads them, so a response to one is much appreciated. If you look through my older Vogue articles, you’ll find less reason to be perplexed—or maybe you’ll wind up in a state of bafflement so extreme you’ll never open another issue. Vogue doesn’t accompany food articles with photorealistic illustrations. It hasn’t since the days of Irving Penn. If you want photos of the season’s hottest forest green, you’ll find them in Vogue’s pages. If you want photos of a chocolate cake, try Bon Appetit or Instagram.

But I wonder why you weren’t more perplexed by the absence of a recipe. After all, there’s not much to do with a photograph of a cake. A recipe can be followed in pursuit of a recreation. It is a second truth of Vogue that I’m not asked to supply recipes for the food I make while reporting my pieces. I appreciate this latitude. But I would understand occasional dismay on the part of a reader.

You did not ask for the Best Chocolate Cake in the World recipe, but I would be well served to collect it all in one place, instead of on the scraps of paper where it currently lives. So as a Christmas gift—and compensation for the lack of photographic embellishment—I offer it here.

The Best Chocolate Cake in the World (according to me, my son, my husband, our door-lady, and several others.)

Make the cake components in the order in which I list them.

For the sponge (cake part)

2 cups (240 g) AP flour

2 cups (396 g) white granulated sugar or a combination of white and brown sugar

3/4 cup (63 g) unsweetened cocoa powder—like Valrhona

2 teaspoons (8 g) baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoons (9 g) baking soda

1 teaspoon (2.8 g) kosher salt

1 cup (227 g) milk

1/2 cup (99 g) vegetable or canola oil

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons coffee

1 cup (227 g) boiling water

Make the sponge:

• Heat the oven to 177 C/350 F.

• Prepare two 9-inch cake pans or spring-form pans by buttering and lightly flouring them and tapping out the excess.

• Combine flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer. Quickly whisk through to combine.

• Add milk, vegetable oil, eggs, and coffee. Mix on medium speed until well combined. Reduce the speed to low and carefully add boiling water, mixing until combined.

• Distribute cake batter between the two prepared cake pans. Bake for 30-35 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean.

• Remove from the oven and let cool for about 10 minutes, remove from the pan and cool completely.

The sponge can be made a day ahead, then stored at room temperature, wrapped in plastic or beeswax paper

*

For the meringue (crispy part)

8 egg whites

200 g confectioners sugar

40 g unsweetened cocoa powder—again, Valrhona

Make the meringue:

• Heat oven to 200 C/392 F

• With a pencil or Sharpie, trace four circles the size of your cake pans onto 2 sheets of nonstick baking paper or parchment paper brushed (after tracing) with vegetable oil.

• In a bowl or a stand mixer, beat egg whites until frothy. Add confectioners sugar and corn starch. Beat until shiny and white. Add cocoa powder. Continue beating to soft peaks.

• Fill a pastry bag with the meringue mixture.

• Place the baking paper onto sheet trays. Fill each of the four circles with meringue, making a spiral with no visible spaces, starting in the center and continuing outwards.

• Lower the oven to 130 C/266 F to bake. Bake at least 1 hour, rotating and switching top to bottom, until completely set. Bake longer if needed. Once completely set, remove from oven and set aside to cool.

*

For the ganache (for the mousse and for drizzling on top)

325 ml heavy cream

325 g dark chocolate (70 percent chocolate) chopped or broken to pieces

20 g butter

1 tbsp warm water

Make the ganache for the drizzle and mousse:

• Melt the butter.

• In a small pot, combine the cream and chocolate. Melt, stirring, over low heat. When the chocolate is completely melted and the two are combined, remove 1/3 to a separate bowl.

• To the removed 1/3, add the melted butter and warm water. Set aside. This will be the ganache covering.

*

For the mousse (for layering inside cake)

3-4 egg whites (4 if the eggs are small)

2 tbsp confectioners sugar

Remaining ganache

Make the mousse:

• In a bowl or a stand mixer, beat egg whites until frothy. Add confectioners sugar. Beat to soft peaks.

• Whisk the 2/3 ganache that is not for drizzling to lighten it. In several additions, fold the egg whites into the ganache, using a spatula and figure-eight movements to combine. Alternately, fold the ganache into the beaten whites.

To assemble the cake:

Carefully slice each sponge in half horizontally, making four thin sponge layers. (You’ll have one leftover, which is a good insurance policy.) On a firm cake round or other surface placed on a cooling rack with a tray beneath, place a round of meringue. Top this with a layer of sponge. Top with mousse. Add a second meringue layer, then a layer of mousse. Add a second sponge, then mousse, then meringue, then mousse. Top this with a final sponge layer. If your ganache topping has cooled too much to be poured, warm it for just a few seconds in the microwave. Pour it evenly over the top of the cake, letting it drip down the sides—hence the rack and tray—and covering the top evenly while leaving the sides drippy. Once the ganache has firmed, move the cake on its round to a serving dish or cake plate.

Assemble the cake just before eating, if you can. Also trust that it will taste wonderful after sitting for an hour or two, and also after several days in the refrigerator, which is where any leftovers—if they exist—should be kept.

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Dear cook, you asked: Where’s the cake? Well, here it is. Now please send me some requests for advice so I can get back to our usual programming.