Chocolate Fudge Loaf Cake!
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A thick, fudgey and delicious chocolate fudge loaf cake, topped with luscious chocolate fudge buttercream frosting, and more!
Loaf cakes!
Loaf cakes… loaf cakes… I wish I’d known about your popularity before this past year, otherwise I would have done more recipes sooner. I honestly cannot get my head around how popular my loaf cake recipes have been! So, here is another..
My Terry’s Chocolate Orange Loaf Cake, and my Lemon Drizzle Loaf Cake have been super popular recently – and I love it! Although, I have had request after request for a really lovely, dense, fudgey and amazing chocolate fudge version, so here it is!
Chocolate fudge loaf cake
I couldn’t resist this from the beginning because you all know how much I adore a chocolate fudge cake. My chocolate fudge cake traybake and the cupcake version have always been popular, but nothing is as popular as the layer cake version! They all directly inspire this one, as they are all based around the same recipe!
As you may be aware, a classic and easy chocolate cake is based around five ingredients, usually. Flour, cocoa powder, eggs, butter and sugar – they make a chocolate Victoria sponge style cake, and I use that style of recipe all the time in my various bakes.. but this one is very very different.
This sponge recipe uses ELEVEN ingredients, so quite different. Flour, cocoa powder, butter, eggs and sugar are still all there, but so is instant coffee, water, dark chocolate, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, and buttermilk. This will sound a bit extreme, but trust me – it’s worth it.
Chocolate, butter and coffee
This cake recipe is very easy to make. You need to melt the dark chocolate and butter together until smooth – like you would for the base of a brownie mixture – and dissolve the coffee into the water.
YOU CAN’T TASTE THE COFFEE in the end results.. so PLEASE, trust me here, and use it. The coffee is designed to bring out a rich and delicious chocolate flavour. It’s 100% worth it!!
Dry ingredients
Instead of self raising flour, you use plain flour, baking powder, and bicarbonate – they react with the other ingredients and create the texture you are after! You whisk the dry ingredients together with the sugar into a bowl with just a spatula or something – you really do not need or want to use an electric mixer here.
Eggs and buttermilk
You then whisk the eggs and buttermilk together – buttermilk is there to react with bicarbonate to create a rise in the cake – it’s very different to your regular use of self raising flour!
However, if you don’t want to buy a pot of buttermilk (which is found with the creams in the uk) you can make your own using whole milk (full-fat) and whisking in 1tbsp of lemon juice and leaving it to sit. It will look split almost, but that’s what you want!
Combine and pour
You then combine the three different mixes together, with a whisk – stir as little as possible, pour into the tin and bake! As it’s a loaf cake, it will take a long time to bake – loaf cakes are similar to bundt cakes in that sense.
Tin
I use my favourite 2lb loaf tin as normal, but they can also vary in size (never understood why?!) – so if you think your tin is too full, make a few cupcakes with the spare mix. I usually fill my tin up to about 3/4 full, so by the time it rises, the tin is full!
Frosting
For the frosting, I used the same idea as the best ever frosting ever – evaporated milk being the key ingredient. The only thing is that yes you will have some evaporated milk leftover, but don’t worry, you can freeze it!
Decoration
With loaf cakes I just like to slather the frosting all over the top, or pipe, but it’s up to you – I often use some strawberries and some more chocolate goodies to decorate and it’s done, but that’s up to you – sometimes just chocolates are good! It’s a bit more effort with the ingredients, but otherwise, it’s such an easy cake to bake! I hope you love it!
Chocolate Fudge Loaf Cake!
Ingredients
The Cake
- 175 g dark chocolate
- 175 g unsalted butter
- 2 tsps instant coffee
- 100 ml boiling water
- 135 g plain flour
- 25 g cocoa powder
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 300 g light brown sugar (or caster sugar)
- 3 medium eggs
- 75 ml buttermilk
The Frosting
- 125 g unsalted butter (room temp - not stork/spread)
- 250 g icing sugar
- 25 g cocoa powder
- 1/2 tsp vanilla (optional)
- 50-75 ml evaporated milk
Decorations
- Sprinkles
- Chocolates
Instructions
For the Cake
- Preheat your oven to 180C/160C Fan, and line a 2lb loaf tin!
- In a microwave proof bowl, add the chocolate and butter and heat and mix until melted. I usually do 30 second bursts!
- Add the coffee granules to a mug, and pour over the boiling water and mix until smooth - add the coffee mix into the chocolate/butter and mix until smooth.
- In a separate bowl, add the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and sugar to a large bowl and whisk until distributed.
- In another bowl, mix together the buttermilk and eggs.
- Add the three mixes together - I pour the chocolate/coffee mix and the egg/buttermilk mix into the dry ingredients and fold until smooth. You do not need to use a stand mixer as you may over-mix it.
- Pour the mixture into the lined 2lb loaf tin - bake in the oven for 55-60 minutes, or until baked through!
- Leave to cool fully once baked!
For the Frosting
- Make sure your butter is at room temperature!
- Beat the butter on it's own for a few minutes to soften!
- Add in the icing sugar and cocoa powder 1/2 at a time, and beat until combined.
- Add the vanilla, and then the evaporated milk a little at a time beating fully in-between each go!
Decoration!
- Slather the frosting onto the top of the loaf cake, and then decorate how you want - chocolates and more!
- Sprinkle on your favourite sprinkles and enjoy!
Notes
- This recipe is based on my chocolate fudge cake and chocolate fudge cupcakes with a few changes to suit the loaf cake!
- I used this 2lb loaf tin as always!
- The evaporated milk cannot be switched to condensed milk.
- PLEASE USE THE COFFEE - it just makes it taste more chocolatey, it doesn't taste of coffee.
- You can make your own buttermilk with 75ml full-fat milk, and 1tbsp of lemon juice.
- This cake will last for 3-4 days, at room temp.
ENJOY!
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J x
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Hi Jane,
I made this recipe today, I love the taste of it, very moist and good but I have a problem here. The top of the cake was not dense enough and it’s middle top sank 😭 Wonder what’s wrong with this? Is it because the flour not sufficient enough in the dough? I did exactly as per your recipe. Please give me your opinion and advice as I love this cake 🍰
The recipe is correct for sure, sinking cakes often means it is under baked slightly, or the oven door was opened too early causing it to sink.
Hi Jane, I’ve loads of Demerara cane sugar can this be used for brown sugar???
Haven’t used it for baking as seems to be bigger crystals.
It can be a bit grainy I won’t lie, but if you have any form of blender you can try and blend the sugar to make the crystals finer x
Sadly, it completely collapsed in the middle. I didn’t touch the oven door for the first 55 minutes! It wasn’t wasted though as it tasted delicious just tearing mouthfuls out of the tin!
Hey Jane,
Is there any substitute for egg in this recipe??
I have not made this one eggless I’m afraid so I don’t know exactly what would work or not but its worth looking into egg replacements if you have done it before!
Hi Jane, could I use normal baking spread/stork for the cake instead of butter? Would it change the texture of the cake?
Many thanks x
For the cake yes, but not the frosting! X
I used 70% dark chocolate and a premium cocoa powder and it was almost too chocolatey for me. Could I use a 50-60% dark chocolate instead? Also do you reckon I could use half butter and half oil to get a more springy finish?
I always recommend using the 70% cocoa content personally, but you could always use a lighter cocoa powder (the risk with the lower percentage is how it bakes) and I’m afraid I have only ever made this with the butter x
I gave up making chocolate cakes some time ago because I was fed up that they were always too dry. After being pestered by my cake loving nephew I gave this recipe a try. All I can say is wow! It’s very simple to make and the final result was AMAZING. Th moistest, most tastiest chocolate cake recipe I’ve every followed. My partner, and ex-chef, said “this is the best cake I’ve ever eaten.” So that I you Jane for restoring my faith in chocolate cakes.
One of the best of Jane’s recipe in my opinion! The frosting is so smooth and chocolatey, it was a hit with every in the family!
Made this today and honestly it was the yummiest thing I’ve ever tasted!! Your recipes are fool proof babe I can’t thank you enough for this yummy recipe.
OH MY GOODNESS!!!!! this cake is amazing!!!! Wonderfully moist and fudge and the icing is out of this world!!!!! My cake was a bit crusty on top (maybe I had the oven too high) but the fudge icing made it forgivable!
Will be making this again for sure!
Hi! Can I use self raising flour instead? And if yes what I have to change ? Thank you
The raising agents are slightly different in this cake (so the texture will be different if you use self raising – it would probably also over flow the tin so ideally you would still use plain! x
Struggled with this one Jane, it didn’t rise at all in the middle….did it twice today with same result. ??
Any ideas why ?
This can happen if the oven door is opened too early – it will cause it to completely collapse on itself. Or, the raising agents weren’t measured correctly, or it was over mixed! x
Hi Jane
Instead of using dark chocolate any chance I can use cocoa powder instead?….if yes, what is the quantity of the cocoa powder i need to use and any changes i need to make?
Thanks
Unfortunately not for this – you need the dark chocolate in the base recipe x