Accidentally Delicious Chocolate Coffee Mocha Cake

By Mary C. Tillotson

We had an occasion for cake not too long ago, and coffee-flavored cake was requested. Following the advice of the internet, I made a cake that ended up being way more delicious than I expected. It's not complicated. Here's the recipe:

1. Brew two cups of strong coffee. Luke usually buys high quality dark roast coffee, and I put 3/8 C coffee and two cups of water in the French press and brewed for three minutes, then poured it into my big measuring cup. It's nice to have a pour spout and I'm told bad things happen if you over-brew. The coffee doesn't need to stay hot so go ahead and get this ready ahead of time. (Luke's normal recipe is 1/8 C coffee with 1 C hot water, brewed in the French press for three minutes. His other tips: buy good coffee and keep the coffee maker clean.)

2. Buy a box of dark chocolate cake mix and follow the instructions, except use coffee where it calls for water. Bake it in a 9x13 pan. (The frosting ended up being weird, so try it this way before attempting a layer cake.)

3. While the cake is baking, make frosting. I used this "icing" recipe, which is basically this: melt two sticks of butter in a bowl, add 5 C powdered sugar, 1/4 C cocoa powder, 1/4 t salt, and 3 T vanilla extract, mix, then add coffee. The recipe called for 1/2 C coffee but I dumped in 3/4 C because that's what I had left. I also dumped everything in on top of the melted butter all at once. I think I also forgot the salt. I was a little generous with the vanilla, and used real vanilla extract (homemade! thanks, awesome in-laws).

4. When you can stick a knife into the cake and it comes out relatively clean, take it out of the oven and let it cool until you run out of patience. Pour the frosting over top. It was a lot of frosting, so it made a layer about as tall as the cake.

5. Put the whole thing in the fridge until you run out of patience again. I think we left it in for about an hour or so. When we went to get it, the frosting had seeped into the cake (probably because I'd added extra coffee, so it was soupier than the original recipe), so there was a thin layer on top but the cake was really moist and frosted top, sides, and bottom.

6. I had bought some instant coffee and mini chocolate chips to sprinkle over top, but never got around to doing that.

Luke really liked it. I liked it except that it tasted like coffee. (I don't like coffee.) I just had some college students over to help eat it so we could finish it off before it went stale (a whole cake for two people, one of whom doesn't like it, is just a lot), and they thought it was delicious.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons