Chocolate Cake with Spiced Buttercream
I made this cake for my aunt’s 60th birthday. Her birthday is in September, so a Fall spice theme fit the season, but in all honesty I recently purchased some Fall-themed sprinkles at TJ Maxx and I really wanted to use them. Hence the Fall-themed birthday cake ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If you’re in a different season or just want to have a different flavoring of your buttercream, go for it! Just leave out the spices and add whatever you want. If you want it to be vanilla flavored, add maybe 1 tbsp of vanilla extract. If you want to use citrusy or flowery extracts, go for it, or add zest from a citrus fruit to complement. Or, you can add cocoa and make it chocolate icing of course.
Note: this recipe was adapted from the One Bowl Chocolate Cake III recipe on AllRecipes.
- approx. 25 slices with 1-inch arc length
- 45 minutes
- 35 minutes
Ingredients
cake
- 2 c (400 g) white sugar
- 1 3/4 c (210 g) all-purpose flour
- 3/4 c (89 g) cocoa powder
- 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 6 tbsp aquafaba (liquid from can of chickpeas; equivalent to 2 eggs)
- 1 c oat milk (or any other non-dairy milk)
- 1/2 c vegetable oil
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 c boiling water
icing
- 4 sticks plant-based butter at room temperature (e.g., Country Crock plant butter)
- 6.5 c confectioners sugar
- 1 tbsp cinnamon
- 1 tbsp nutmeg
- 1/2 tsp allspice
- 1/4 tsp ground cloves
- 2 tbsp oat milk (or any other non-dairy milk)
Directions
cake
- Preheat oven to 350° F.
- Prepare two 8” round cake pans using your favorite method. I like to spray the pans with olive oil baking spray and cut out parchment paper to line the bottom and the sides. You might prefer another method, e.g., buttering/oiling + flouring the pan. It really doesn’t matter, you just don’t want the cake to stick.
- Stir together the dry ingredients: sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
- Mix in the wet ingredients (except the boiling water!) on medium speed for about 2 minutes: eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla.
- Slowly pour in the boiling water (while continuing to mix on medium speed). Note: the batter will be super thin. This is expected.
- Pour the batter evenly between the two pans. If you have a kitchen scale and prefer math to visual inspection, you can weigh the bowl before you start and after you make the batter, subtract the bowl weight from the bowl+batter weight, and divide by 2 to get the weight you want to pour into each tin. If you are using a KitchenAid 9-qt metal bowl and forgot to weigh it before mixing the batter, I’ve been there before—mine weighs 791 grams and yours probably does too.
icing
- Beat the butter until smooth using an electric mixer (medium high speed/KitchenAid level 3).
- Add the confectioners sugar and beat until smooth.
- Add all the spices and the milk and beat until evenly mixed.
- Ice the cake once it is completely cooled.
decorating
- The method I use for icing cakes requires a few fancy items: a revolving cake stand, an offset icing spatula, a piping bag, and an icing smoother/decorating comb.
- Lay one cake layer on the cake stand. Fill the piping bag with icing and pipe in a spiral pattern covering the top of the cake. Smooth it with the offset spatula.
- Lay the second layer on top of the first. Pipe icing in a spiral pattern along the walls of the two layers, starting from the bottom and working your way to the top. Once you cover the walls, do the same thing on the top of the cake.
- Use the smoother to smooth the icing on the top and bottom.
- Use the comb to make a pattern of your choice around the wall of the cake.
- Add sprinkles or other decoration to your liking. To make the sprinkle-60 in the picture, I made a stencil by drawing the numbers on parchment paper and cutting out the numbers. I then placed the paper (with the numbers removed) on top of the cake and filled the open areas densely with sprinkles. Carefully remove the paper and smooth around sprinkles as needed.
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