No-Measure Chocolate Cake (Make Cake without Weighing Scales)

Honestly after following all the instructions correctly.I do not recommend this recipe,it is a waste of ingredients.It is tasteless.Please food52 remove this recipe ! :(

Food52 should really remove this recipe from its site as it tarnishes their good reputation. It’s a truly awful cake that is very dense and gluey and not very sweet. I’d really urge you not to waste your ingredients. I followed the recipe exactly and was so disappointed.

Wanted a quick ,easy dessert. I had saved this recipe to my favorites & thought I would give it a try. Followed the recipe exactly using KA triple cocoa & KA self rising flour and strong coffee. Buttered my 10" springform pan and dusted with the cocoa. Best cake ever !! Not sure if this is good thing as I always have these ingredients on hand. :-)

I used coconut oil (its a liquid at room temp here in the tropics), turbinado sugar and decaf coffee. It came out fantastic. Coconut flavor was subtle.

No me gustó, es poco dulce, vamos que no lo haré de nuevo...

I'm an experienced baker. Made this and followed all directions. Used hot water rather than coffee, and Droste cocoa powder. I had to throw it out. I've never had to do that before. It was totally tasteless.

Sadly, this cake just wasn't "it" for us. We did not like the texture, too dry. Also, I wish I had thought of it when I was putting it together to add a teaspoon of vanilla which I always do in chocolate recipes. I used coffee for the liquid.

Most yogurt containers I see now are less than 6 ounces (often 5.3 ounces). What to do about the eggs? Still use 2.

I love this easy recipe! Instead of coffee, I used Scottish Breakfast tea and added a teaspoon of freshly ground cardamom. I've also used good quality vanilla and English Breakfast tea. It's moist and not overly sweet!

I finally tried this recipe. Sadly, it did not rise. I could not get my hands on self-rising flour, so I tried the substitute suggested in palyn hart's comment (1 container cake flour and one container AP flour.). The taste is delicious and it's certainly edible, but not something I would serve to guests.
Oh, well. Guess I'll have to eat it all by myself. ; ) And next time I'll wait until I have the self-rising flour on hand.

One of my favorite pleasures in life is a rich, moist, not-too-sweet, naked, single-layer chocolate cake topped with generous scoops of good vanilla ice cream. This cake fit the bill perfectly, and will now be my go-to cake recipe. I made it using a 7-ounce container of full-fat Fage Greek yogurt, noting the yogurt level in the cup, and using that same level as the fill point (not quite all the way to the top) for the other ingredients. The only changes I made were to replace one cup of the flour with King Arthur unbleached cake flour (for extra tenderness), and King Arthur organic AP flour for the remaining cup. I also added one teaspoon of vanilla and used slightly watered-down coffee for the liquid. For the cocoa, I went basic with regular Hershey's cocoa, but in future will try other premium cocoa brands to see if it makes a difference. I baked the cake in a regular 9-inch cake pan lined with parchment, and used not quite all of the batter (for fear of overfilling). The cake required just a few minutes over the recommended bake time, and came out slightly domed, with just a few surface cracks. When cool, the cake was tender, moist, not too sweet or overly dense, with well balanced flavors. Absolutely delicious. Topped with vanilla ice cream, it was heavenly. Was equally tasty the next two days, enjoyed with just a glass of cold milk. So grateful for this recipe!

I used part black cocoa from King Arthur, too. For some reason, mine fell in in the center and didn't totally cook in the center. I baked it longer and was afraid it would burn if I left it in longer. I might try it in a Bundt pan next time to solve that problem. I'm thinking it could be because it's been extremely humid lately from all the hurricanes. Otherwise I don't know as I haven't had this problem before. I'm an experienced baker.

I made this using coconut oil and a combination of King Arthur triple cocoa blend and King Arthur Black cocoa(purchased at Food52). Adding coffee is a must, brings out the chocolate flavor.
Reminds of an old fashion Devil's Food cake.

It would be helpful to know what size of containers you are talking about!! We all live in different locations. You can get different size containers of all those ingredients.

Oh, nevermind. A pinch!

How much salt?

I made this recipe with very slight changes. I used regular a 7 oz container of plain yogurt, (no Greek yogurt in Argentina), 1/2 a cont. of sunflower oil, and half a cont. of unsweetened cocoa powder, the other half of finely chopped 70% cocoa chocolate, because I have a lot and I love it and didn't feel like melting it, which would be the other option. It's really good, and no doubt the original version must be too, but with half the oil, in my opinion.

I made this recipe tonight for my son and daughter-in-law's anniversary celebration. It was a fun recipe - a nice change from the usual. I used a full 7 ounce freshly brewed Americano in place of the water, along with 2 teaspoons vanilla. Hindsight, this may have been too strong a coffee to use, and I may have been a bit careless and not leveled off the unsweetened cocoa, perhaps adding a bit more than it called for. This added a lot of intensity, and when I tasted the finished batter it did not taste nearly sweet enough. I ended up adding another almost 1/2 cup of sugar to get it to the right sweetness for our personal taste. So in effect, I pretty much doubled the sugar. This made it take longer - almost 45 minutes to bake - which was fine. After it had cooled, I poked holes in the cake with a bamboo skewer and poured a homemade salted caramel sauce over top, again to balance out the intensity of the chocolate. We had it with vanilla ice cream and it was delicious. Everyone loved it. If anyone wants the homemade caramel sauce recipe, I'm pasting the link below. We thought it went quite well with the cake.
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2016/09/print/easy-caramel-sauce-recipe.html

I'm surprised at all the craziness in the comments.
It's just a fun way to put together a cake quickly/easily.
There are a ton of chocolate cake recipes if you want to use measuring cups/spoons/ other ingredients.
Let this be what it is.

BTW, the Fage small yogurt containers here are now 6 oz. I think maybe they were 7 oz originally but have been shrunk down to 6. Also, liquid and dry measurements are totally different and volume is different than weight.

I'm confused by the positive comments on this cake - it's too oily. Maybe using half the amount oil would be better. Taste wise maybe melted butter or another oil would be nicer but the canola oil really didn't work for me.

I wish people would stop pushing canola oil. There is NO study proving that it either healthier or unhealthy. We were sold this crap when the government wanted Canada to sign NAFTA and the Canadians had more canola than they knew what to do with. By the way, how many people actually know what canola oil is made from. It's rapeseed, by the way. Now can someone tell me how it's grown? Under what conditions? What makes it better than the peanut oil I choose to use?

When you say "prepared" spring form pan, do you mean to butter the pan or butter and flour the pan?

Has anyone actually made it yet? All I'm seeing is technical questions/comments. Sounds like a great recipe as is.

Do you think you could use kahlua for the liquid, Instead of coffee or warm water?

Hello! Unfortunately we don't have greek yogurt in Argentina. Would it work if I use regular plain yogurt? Thanks!

Can applesauce be substituted for the canola oil to decrease the fat and calorie content?

Seven ounces of oil makes a way too greasy and fat bomb of a cake. Great chocolate cakes can be made with far less fat, and taste equally delicious as this recipe.

Well, you're still measuring ingredients. You just use the yogurt container to measure instead of regular measuring cups. ;)

Since this uses yogurt, does the cake have to be kept refrigerated?

If I use regular, all purpose flour, could you tell me how much bak soda/bak pwdr to use, please?

I don't have self-rising flour. I was going to ask about appropriate substitute but then found a recipe online: 1 c AP flour, 1 ½ tsp baking powder, ¼ tsp salt. I also understand coffee makes the chocolate flavor more intense, so I'm going to use that over water. I can't wait to try this!

I don't like canola oil. Can I use a different oil in place of it? Extra virgin olive oil perhaps?

The picture of the Fage yogurt is a 6oz container. Just an FYI

I don't keep self-rising flour on hand. It is easy to measure out baking powder and salt and add that to all-purpose flour. I also prefer my standard measuring tools--I suffered to learn all the Tbsp, tsp, cups, pints, etc., and I'm not switching! However, liquid measures (fluid ounces) vs dry measures (cup, half cup, 2/3 cup, etc.) don't always match up well. How about a straight-forward from-scratch recipe for those of us past a certain age? Also, the cake in the photo looks like it broke/cracked badly; any tips for avoiding an unlovely result? Thanks!

What exactly do you mean by "container". This seems pretty imprecise for a recipe? I don't live in the U.S. at the moment, but would love to make this cake but "containers" in Asia come in all different shapes and sizes, different from the U.S. Could you provide the measurements in metric? Thanks!

For those of us not in Burma, Liberia, and the US, 7oz is 200ml, or as near as dammit. Scrumptious cake, by the way .

When you say prepared spring form pan, do you mean just grease with butter or with a little flour as well?

Any nutritional info?

PS. I've made your chocolate babka - fantastic!!!

No spring form pan.
What else would work?

Could I just use measuring cups instead? I always have full fat Greek yogurt in a big container. I'm wondering if 8 oz of each ingredient would work instead of 7, or if the pan would be too small... I may just go try it right now :-)

I say add a cup of chocolate chips for perfection.

Can't stand the taste of canola oil. Can I sub in coconut oil?

Any chance this could be made with gluten free flour? And coconut based yoghurt?