Ultimate nutella Chocolate Cake

"Feast of Saint Valentine"

I’m finally back from my cooking holiday and a day late as well. It’s another January and chocolate month is here once more. Let start things off with a yummy chocolate cake. This is not just any cake though! This is rich, decadent, chocolaty layers with Nutella frosting and topped with Ferrero rocher ….sigh…too epic not to try. 

I made this cake last year for my boyfriend’s birthday and it was way too sweet. So I decided to tweak the recipe and use a different Nutella frosting.  Beatty’s chocolate cake is my absolute favorite chocolate cake ever. I have been using this recipe and tweaking it for years. The original uses coffee however my latest tweak has been to use chocolate milk instead of the coffee and to use super dark chocolate powder; so rich and moist and lovely. 

I’m on the fence about whether to use oil or butter, oil tends to make the cake very moist, but the whipped butter makes the cake very fluffy. The recipe currently yields a fluffy texture. If you want to try the oil substitute the 1 ½ stick of salted butter for ½ cup of oil and ½ teaspoon of salt.  My next venture would be to try using both oil and butter, but we will see how that goes

Adapted from one of the best chocolate cake recipes ever Ina Garten’s Beatty’s chocolate cake

Ingredients (printable recipe)

1 ½ stick salted butter

2 cups sugar

2 eggs

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup dark cocoa powder

1 ½ teaspoon baking soda

1 cup butter milk

1 cup chocolate milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

¼ teaspoon almond extract

¼ teaspoon hazelnut extract

Nutella buttercream recipe: from "add a pinch"

Directions

For the cake

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees
• Prepare two 8 inch baking pans by roiling them and lining them with parchment paper
• Mix butter until it’s light and fluffy then add the sugar and mix until creamed together well
• Add eggs one at a time beat together then add vanilla, almond and hazelnut extract
• In a bowl combine flour, baking soda, and cocoa powder
• Add the flour mixture and buttermilk milk alternately to the creamed butter and eggs starting and ending with the flour mixture.
• Pour into prepared pans
• Bake for one hour or until the tester comes out clean
• Allow the cakes to cool completely before frosting with the Nutella buttercream
• Garnish with Ferrero rocher chocolates 

Xoxo Greedygirl