Homemade Ganache Chocolate Coffee Cake

Our homemade chocolate coffee cake is delicious. Layered 7 inch cake is the perfect size for a few people celebrating a birthday! Fancier than our coffee cake with cake mix with a ganache filling and frosting on top too. Delicious dessert your family will love.

Coffee Chocolate Cake

As for the filling and frosting you can enhance those too if you want to. Making dessert from scratch allows you the versatility to tone down the flavors or amp them up even more. I will talk about how to make this quick with a mix, and homemade from the get go depending on how much time you have.

How do you add coffee into chocolate cake?

Well there are a few different options. You can add grounds, use instant crystals or swap out the water with brewed instead. In these instructions we used grounds but if you used cake mix to make the base that requires water which I would swap out for your morning brew.

This makes a great birthday cake for just about everyone. You can certainly leave out the ground coffee for the kiddos but for me I like the kick. Deep and rich is what I am usually craving around my special day. Yes I do love my colorful purple cake too but this is just rich, rich, rich.

Chocolate Ganache Cake Ingredients

• 3/4 c all purpose flour
• 2 tbsp cocoa powder
• Butter softened, not melted
• 3 eggs should be room temperature
• 1/2 c brown sugar
• 3 tbsp ground coffee, optional
• Heavy whipping cream
• 1 tbsp cocoa powder
• 3 tbsp brown sugar

Homemade Ganache Recipe

You can make this below on the stovetop or this is How to Make Chocolate Gravy which takes a bit less time but doesn’t harden like the other.

• 1/2 c dark chocolate 80 grams in weight
• 1/2 c heavy whipping cream
• 1 tbsp butter softened

You can make this in a double boiler on the stovetop to melt and whisk together. OR we will explain how to make this in your microwave too!

Kind of Cake with Layers of Coffee and Chocolate

Now this one is very homemade. If you don’t have the time, or don’t have the energy to do from scratch from the start you could tweak this a bit. Instead of this homemade coffee cake batter you could instead use a cake mix to make the base and add a bit of instant or coffee grounds into the mix with the other needed ingredients like egg and oil.

You could follow our coca cola chocolate cake recipe which is super simple using soda and just the mix, literally. Then make the filling as listed below or just opt for a tub of frosting from the store. I mean what we share below in the recipe card is really easy but I get it, time may be short.

You can melt chocolate chips in the microwave instead of bars with the heavy whipping cream to make the ganache. I would use dark if you have the choice instead of white or milk chocolate to give it a more authentically rich flavor. In that you could even add a pinch of ground coffee too to enhance the overall flavor.

8 Inch Chocolate Cake Recipe

If you wanted to make an 8 inch cake in a 8″ pan it would just bake a few minutes faster, but it will be a bit thinner as well. Not a huge difference but something to consider if you want to swap out the sizes.

Chocolate Ganache Cake Recipe

• Preheat the oven to 360 F. Beat soft butter with brown sugar in a bowl. Separate the whites from the yolks. Add the yolks one at a time into this bowl. Mix. Sift dry ingredients; flour mixed with cocoa powder, then add into the bowl, as well as coffee or espresso powder. Stir with a spatula or mixer.
• Beat egg whites to strong peaks in a separate bowl. Gently fold the beaten egg whites into the chocolate batter. Line a 7″ baking pan with parchment paper rounds and transfer the chocolate batter to it. Bake until toothpick inserted is dry with moist crumbs attached, 25-30 minutes.
• It is best to let the cake cool slightly right in the pan, after which it can be easily removed, as it will decrease in size.
• Let the cake cool completely on a wire rack, then cut it into two layers. If the top has risen and cracked, it is better to cut it off too so both layers are flat.
• Whip the heavy cream with cocoa powder and sugar (about 1 minute if the cream is 50% fat, and 2 minutes if it is 35%).

It is convenient to use a springform pan to assemble the moist chocolate cake. Place the first layer of cake down and spread with whipped cream.

How to Make Ganache in Microwave

• Put dark chocolate pieces in a bowl, heat the cream and butter with it.
• Heat in the microwave in a large bowl for 30 second increments 2-3 times until smooth and melted.
  • you could use dark chocolate chips if that is all you have

Remove rich chocolate cake from the pan and place on a plate. I usually like to let the frosting cool to closer to room temperature so it sticks nicely. Spread the top and sides with chocolate ganache frosting and refrigerate until completely set.

Chocolate Cake Recipe from Scratch easy Halloween

So if you were making this into a treat for the holidays you really could frost with any color you like. This one is dark so for Halloween you could just use white and orange piping to make into the right colors for that special day. Spooky decorations and all would work well against the chocolate background.

How to save leftover cake

Before storing the leftover cake, make sure it has cooled down completely. Warm cake might create condensation inside the storage container, leading to a loss of texture and taste. Use plastic wrap or aluminum foil to tightly cover the entire cake. Ensure that no part of the cake is exposed to the air, as this can cause it to dry out and become stale.