I developed this banana bread recipe using the 

, which is the idea of using 3 parts flour, 2 parts sugar, and 1 part fat. Although most baking ratios as measured out in weight, this is made extra simple by measuring out the ingredients using a ½-cup measuring cup. This means you can easily whip up delicious banana bread without a recipe whenever the craving hits. You’ll also notice that in this recipe I chose to list melted butter instead of oil, which I used in the video tutorial on Instagram. That’s because I like to use them interchangeably depending on what outcome I’m looking to achieve. Because butter becomes a solid at room temperature, if you use melted butter in the recipe, the banana bread will be denser and have a slightly richer flavor. Alternatively, since oil is a liquid at room temperature, banana bread made with oil will have a lighter, moister, and more cake-like crumb. Experiment with both types of fat to see which you prefer–you could even try it with browned butter or olive oil instead!

Nutella Swirl Banana Bread

My mother was the saddest person I ever knew.  Life and everything in it failed her utterly.  I've never understood fully the roots of her disappointment, though heaven knows I tried.  Nonetheless, one of my best memories of her is this cake.  

My mother, Marilyn Joan, known as Joan, grew up on a farm in the general area of Fenton, Michigan.  On a neighboring farm lived a woman by the name of Belle Foley.  Over the years, I've nurtured an image of a woman described by my father, who came to know her, as warm and smiling.  

This is the cake she taught my mother to make.  It was always our go to cake for anyone's birthday when my sister and I were children, then eventually for our children and their friends as we grew our own families.  The ingredients and directions are exactly as I inherited them from my mother.  My notes are in parentheses.

Measurements are fairly approximate.  According to my mother, "Belle measured cups with teacups and teaspoons with something you'd use to stir sugar into coffee."  As well, "rounding" measurements mean just that.  Butter was something they churned from the milk and cream from their own cows, eggs were gathered from beneath their chickens, and need I explain that the milk was anything less than  "whole"?  

You really can mix it in one large bowl.  Sift together dry ingredients?  Forget about it.  Whisk?  Sure, if you have one, which I'm fairly sure Belle Foley did not.  Alternatively, mix with a rubber spatula.  

I like to think that Belle Foley took a nervous, unsure young woman to her side and shared this cake recipe with her, and gave her some joy.  The greatest tribute to both her and my mother is to pass this on.  

Enjoy!  And please pass it on. - boulangere

And now for something entirely new, some of you may have followed the story on foodpickle of the miraculous gentleman who posted a question as to how to get in touch with me because, you see, Belle Foley was his mother.  You can read the very long thread here:  http://www.food52.com/foodpickle/8078-a-question-about-a-recipe-belle-foley-s-chocolate-cake

For the sake of ease of use, I'm posting the frosting recipe on the page Belle Foley's Chocolate Cake Chocolate Frosting:  http://www.food52.com/recipes/14604_belle_foleys_chocolate_cake_chocolate_frosting  This cake has created miracles.

Belle Foley's Chocolate Cake

This cake is very barely adapted from Smitten Kitchen's sour cream chocolate cake, but it's so good, and pairs so well with all different frostings, like this simple and nutty tahini buttercream.

Chocolate Cake with Tahini Buttercream Frosting

Meet your new go-to birthday cake, bake sale cake, dinner party cake, late night snack cake—for when the fridge is at its barest and you need chocolate cake now. (It's also vegan and parve and dirt cheap, but you wouldn't know unless we told you.) This isn't the richest, most chocolatey cake—if you like, you can amp up the chocolate by swapping in coffee for the water, or adding more cocoa. But you don't need to. It's a different animal: light, delicately strung together with cocoa, and not terribly sweet. Adapted slightly from 

Margaret Fox's Amazon Chocolate Cake

Let me preface with this: I actively avoid the chocolate options on dessert menus, frosting mostly makes me shudder, and my diet is not even remotely free of gluten. So when I say that I delight in the deep squidge and brownie-like density of this gluten-free chocolate cake, with its tufts of frosting, I hope you know how much that means. 

Frankly, this is just a really good chocolate cake, which happens to be gluten-free. It’s a single layer, but a hefty one, an absolute dream to slice into. You really do need a pan that’s at least three inches deep to fit all of that batter. If all you have is a two inch deep pan, you can fashion a little parchment paper or aluminum foil collar that extends about 2 inches above the lip of the pan and tuck it inside before pouring in your cake batter. Your arts and crafts moment will yield a gloriously tall cake with the right ratio of cake to frosting. 

Except for that one ask, the cake is a cinch to make. With your ingredients close to hand and the coffee brewed, you can have the batter ready by the time your oven fully preheats, I promise you this. A tiny bit of cinnamon adds a hint of toasty, cozy warmth. The frosting occupies a sublime plane between the gritty, too-sweet, powdered-sugar sort and those meringue buttercreams that taste like you bit into a stick of butter. 

This recipe was created and tested using Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free 1-to-1 Baking Flour, which is mostly rice flour, plus some starch and xanthan gum to give it body and structure. I prefer to use a blend without chickpea flour, as I find it a bit too grassy for most palates and purposes. Double check to make sure your blend includes xanthan gum and, if it doesn’t, add about 1/2 teaspoon of it to the dry ingredients.  

Fudgy Gluten-Free Chocolate Cake With Hazelnut Frosting 

 and is a part of Food52's Bake Off benefitting No Kid Hungry. It's her chocolate cake of choice for people where dietary restrictions are not an issue. "I don’t even need to explain it’s vegan," she says. "No need to offer explanations. You just need to offer the cake. On top of everything else, it’s incredibly simple to make." FREEZE NOTE: The cake can be made ahead and frozen, without icing. When cool, carefully wrap cake in a double layer of clingfilm and a layer of foil. Freeze for up to 3 months. To defrost, unwrap and place on a serving plate at room temperature for 3–4 hours.

Nigella Lawson's Dark and Sumptuous Vegan Chocolate Cake 

I like to serve these individual chocolate cakes for dessert at the end of long dinner parties (everyone loves chocolate). But more often than not, I just end up baking one ramekin off for myself when I'm alone, then stashing the rest, covered, in the fridge to enjoy throughout the week. (Just add five minutes if you're baking from fridge-cold.) We spend so much time talking about meal prep, but 

 prep can get you a long way in these colder, darker days. This recipe is easily divisible by half if you wish to only make two ramekins, which I often do when I have a date coming over for dinner. (That means 3 tablespoons of olive oil, by the way.) However many of these you decide to make, I've found that a contrast in temperature and flavor—in the form of cool, soft vanilla ice cream—is wonderful relief against the dark, hot lava cake. Sans ice cream, though, these do happen to be dairy- and gluten-free, which comes in handy when you're cooking for others.

Clementine Chocolate Lava Cakes

I recently reunited with my father after over 40 years, along with a newly discovered 15 year old half-brother, Sam. Their visit fell on Sam’s birthday and so I asked him what his favorite dessert was. In typical teenage fashion, he shrugged, looked down at the ground and said that he didn’t have one. “Come on, Sam,” I said, “everyone has a favorite dessert.” He finally admitted that he liked a chocolate cherry cake his mother used to make for him. As he described the cake, any sign of teen angst melted away. I called his mom and she was kind enough to send her recipe on to me so that I could make it for his birthday. I played around with it, less flour, less sugar, more chocolate, and came up with this. Chocolate cake, it seems, can bridge any distance. 

Sam's Favorite Chocolate Cake With Cherry Jam

Traditionally, magicians don’t reveal their tricks, but, lucky for you, I’m not an actual sorcerer. (I just practice the dark 

 arts from time to time.) Recently, I concocted a mysterious but incredibly delicious cake recipe that's sure to defy what you think you know about baking. So, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, gather around for the most magical bake! You'll have to taste it to believe it. The recipe starts out like all good magic tricks do, very simply. A silky chocolate cake batter is poured into a pan. Then, you top it with a concoction of brown sugar and cocoa powder. Strange? It gets even more mysterious. Next, you drown the top of the cake with hot water straight from the cauldron (or just regular hot tap water works fine), say a spell (this is optional, but I recommend it), wave your magic wand (or rubber spatula), pop the cake into the oven for twenty minutes, and bippidty boopity boo. What comes out of the oven looks like a perfectly baked chocolate cake, but there’s a shocking surprise underneath. A hot, bubbly, molten layer of 

. Is there an explanation for this? I'm sure. But, like most magic tricks, it’s probably more fun not to know.

Magical Molten Chocolate Lava Cake 

A PSA for all the chocolate cake–loving, Instant Pot–owning folks in the crowd: this gorgeous, uber-fudgy, 

 chocolate cake is destined to become your new fave. The cake is about as easy-peasy as they come, what with its fab one bowl–ness and short ingredient list, and has the silkiest of textures, due to the uniquely moist cooking environment that is the IP. The cake, in fact, manages to straddle both a homey, fudgy brownie vibe and an elevated, sliver-of-chocolate-cake-post-fancy-French–restaurant–meal one. The finished cake is a sight to behold, due to its dark, deeply chocolatey color; but it’s true that the cake does take about 15 minutes longer to “bake” than it would if one were doing so in a conventional oven. However, the texture of this cake, “cooked” under pressure, cannot be beat. Despite how hyperbolic this might sound, the uniquely steamy environment of the Instant Pot produces truly the moistest of cakes, with the most velvety of textures. Moreover, as we IP-devotees know, the 50 minute cook time is all oven-free, hands-off time, with no fears about a dry, over-baked crumb getting in the way of whatever else you are doing while this cutie “bakes” (whether it’s making your actual dinner or binge-watching 

). A dollop of crème fraiche is the perfect finishing touch, though unsweetened whipped cream or even vanilla (or caramel!) ice cream would be awfully nice, too.

Fudgy, Flourless Instant Pot Chocolate Cake

My friends often request the Hyde Park Fudge Cake for their birthdays, which I've made a hundred times. This variation has a yummy coconut filling and a decadent ganache that I could eat with a spoon until I'm sick! - nannydeb

Rich Chocolate Cake with Coconut Filling and Ganache

 comes the easiest way to get all the best parts of the molten chocolate cake with none of the stress. For this cake, you make a standard batter from melted butter, chocolate, sugar, and eggs, then pour most of it into a springform pan and bake for 25 minutes. That right there is good enough to serve on its own, but the real hoorah comes when you then take the reserved batter, spread it over the top of the cake, and give it an additional 15 minutes in a higher temperature oven, until it's just barely baked. The result is a firm, dense bottom—the chewy, feels-like-food element that many flourless chocolate cakes lack—that acts as a crust-like container for the melting, pudding-like top. Nothing will break or burst or turn to goo or go terribly wrong. Success is (practically) guaranteed. And when you put it in the refrigerator, the bottom layer will become brownie-like, the top like mousse. 

Total chilling time: 1 hr, 25 mins Total cooling time: 2 hrs, 10 mins

Ooey and Gooey Double-Baked Chocolate Cake

This cake is ideal for a simple layer cake for birthdays and parties, but is also delicious on its own without frosting. 

Adapted from Hershey's.

Perfect Chocolate Cake

This cake is only very lightly adapted from Molly Wizenberg's Winning-Hearts-and-Minds Cake -- and it gets better as it ages (or is stashed in the freezer for a bit). Serve it with powdered sugar, whipped cream, this lemon whipped cream, or nothing at all. 

Almost Flourless Chocolate Cake with Meyer Lemon Whipped Cream 

Hot Cocoa Cake with Peppermint-Marshmallow Frosting 

Not only does this cake come together in one bowl, but you also don't have to fuss around with measuring cups or spoons. All you need is a 7-ounce, individual-sized yogurt container. 

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

From Sweet Laurel Bakery’s cookbook: “This was the cake that changed everything. Our whole company, and point of view, is founded on this cake. Decadent, rich, beautiful, and intensely chocolaty, it flies in the face of people who don’t think you can have your cake and be grain-free, too. This cake is a showstopper, so get ready—people will freak out over it.” Featured in: 

The Insane (Grain-Free!) Chocolate Cake That Literally Changed Everything

The Chocolate Cake That Changed Everything

, but split the batter between two 9-inch round cake pans and baked them for about 20 minutes.

Chocolate Cake with Cranberry Buttercream 

This is not a fancy cake. It’s not tricky to make, nor does it come laden with some kind of extravagant buttercream icing (though I do serve mine with a good dollop of rosemary whipped cream on the side). Rather, it’s simple and sophisticated—rich, dark, and, most importantly of all, irresistible to any guest at my table. It is the kind of cake that you can prepare ahead of time and, better still, it’s the kind of cake that improves with age. Rather like a good bottle of wine, its flavors develop and the crumb becomes denser and richer and all the more irresistible with the passing of time. 

Flourless Chocolate Cake with Whipped Rosemary Cream

I sat cross-legged on the carpeted floor of my rented canalhouse apartment in Amsterdam, hunched over my neatly packed suitcase. Every item had appeared to be in its place, perfectly rolled and folded. And then I saw a rogue sprinkle. I gingerly plucked the offending confection off my shirt, careful not to streak the fabric with chocolate, and popped it into my mouth. No sense in wasting a good sprinkle. I dug a little deeper. I found a pocket of four more and ate them one by one. Then another little reservoir. Then another. The box of dark chocolate De Ruijter sprinkles that I had planned to cart back to the States had sprung a tiny leak. Little pockets of sprinkles were sprinkled in every pocket of my suitcase. As I tracked them through my luggage, I imagined myself a contented chimpanzee at mealtime, carefully digging for ants. I searched with deliberate intensity for precious sustenance that I discovered only in tiny but triumphant increments. Try it in your kitchen after you decorate this cake. To evenly apply sprinkles onto a frosted cake, place the cake on a cake stand set in a rimmed baking sheet. Pour the sprinkles into your hand, aim at the cake, and blow gently. Make a wish. Rotate and repeat. This cake is killer the next day, zapped for a few seconds in the microwave and served with a big glass of milk. (Eat while wearing pajamas, either for breakfast or a midnight snack.) 

Dark Chocolate Malt Celebration Cake

Adapted from The Ladies Receipt Book by Eliza Leslie.

This, friends, is the earliest-yet-found printed recipe for Chocolate Cake. “Wait, really?” you may be thinking… but it’s true! Older recipes that mention Chocolate and Cake were actually referring to cakes meant for serving with chocolate, usually of the hot and drinkable variety. Though cakes containing chocolate as an ingredient date back further—the Marquis de Sade mentions one in a 1779 letter sent to his wife from prison—we have found no written recipe until Eliza Leslies’ 1847 book, The Ladies Reciept Book.

Eliza’s recipe calls for using grated chocolate or “prepared cocoa.” I love that both the Chocolate Cake and the Chocolate Chip Cookie evolved containing bits of the heavenly stuff, so grated chocolate it is. As with the Indian Meal Cake, Eliza used an entire nutmeg. In fact, you rarely see an early 19th-century recipe that does not call for nutmeg. They were crazy for the stuff.

The highlight of this cake, for me at least, is the icing. The word icing evolved from this thick mixture of egg whites and sugar; for ages, bakers would pour it over a hot cake, then return it to the oven until it was dry and, well, ice-like in its smoothness. Eventually bakers stopped icing the hot cake, and, like in the recipe below, poured the mixture over the a cooled cake, then set it aside to dry for a few hours (hello Royal Icing). 

As an aside, Eliza calls for lemon oil, rose extract, or vanilla extract to flavor the icing. Until the early 19th century, vanilla was used as a perfume by those well-off rather than for cooking or baking purposes due to the high cost of production (second only to Saffron).

Chocolate Cake, 1847

This birthday cake (and barbecue and potluck and dinner party cake) goes back three generations in my family—for the full story, head 

. For the chocolate frosting, here are three I recommend: 

, adapted from Hershey’s Perfect Chocolate Cake, is excellent and the closest facsimile to canned frosting. 

 from Food52er EmilyC is similar, but whips in cream cheese, for a richer, well-balanced milk chocolatey experience. Or if you really don’t want to take out the mixer bowl again, you can go with 

, though the deep chocolate flavor is almost too much for a homey cake like this. Recipe adapted from the 

Susan Miglore's Fudgy Cream Cheese Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake doughnut topped with gooey coconut-pecan frosting. All the best things about a cake doughnut, in a cake-inspired doughnut. 

German Chocolate Cake Donuts

This cake was made in my family over and over again for birthdays and festive celebrations throughout my childhood, and it’s been a favorite whenever I've put it on my dessert menus. 

It’s sort of my little black dress of a dessert, as it's quite simple to make and keeps well for a few days, yet is stylish and elegant at the same time. The rich, dense chocolate tastes festive and indulgent, but in a very adult way. You can dress it up with a ganache frosting or keep it plain with just a little confectioners' sugar. I like it best with a little dollop of tangy crème fraiche on the side. 

It reminds me very much of the flourless chocolate walnut cake of Capri where Elizabeth David vacationed with some very flamboyant British expats, and I like to imagine she got the recipe from there. 


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