20 Crave-Inducing Chocolate Cakes

Red Wine Chocolate Snack Cake
Photo: Justin Walker

These incredible chocolate cake recipes include cocoa, dark chocolate, ganache, custard, and crumbs. From a silky, triple-layer cake to a moist Austrian torte, there's a chocolaty cake here to celebrate, entertain, or make your day.

01 of 20

Triple-Layer Sour Cream Chocolate Cake

Triple-Layer Sour Cream Chocolate Cake
Nicole Franzen

This magnificent cake has three layers of moist, tender chocolate with a hint of cinnamon and a silky chocolate ganache.

02 of 20

Chocolate Blackout Cake

Best Chocolate Desserts: Chocolate Blackout Cake

Pastry star Gale Gand layers her phenomenal, high-rising cake with an intensely chocolaty custard and coats it with cake crumbs.

03 of 20

Milk-Chocolate-Frosted Layer Cake

Milk Chocolate Frosted Layer Cake

This cake from Karina Gowing is perfection for anyone who loves frosting. The ultracreamy icing, which is almost like a milk-chocolate ganache, gets spread liberally over layers of light, delicate, cocoa-flavored cake.

04 of 20

Mom's Chocolate Cake

Mom's Chocolate Cake

This is a real old-fashioned American chocolate layer cake. It's very moist, very chocolaty, a snap to make and best baked the day before serving. Marcia Kiesel acquired the recipe from her friend Joyce Cole, who got it from her mother.

05 of 20

Chocolate Cake

Chocolate Cake

Dutch-process cocoa and buttermilk give this fluffy cake its texture and savory flavor. Garnish the cake by sifting confectioners' sugar and cocoa on top, and serve 10 in about an hour.

06 of 20

Sacher Torte

Sacher Torte

Sacher torte is a classic Austrian chocolate cake layered with apricot preserves. Lidia Bastianich's version uses the preserves three ways: for moistening the cake layers, as a thick filling between the layers and as a glaze to seal the cake before covering it in chocolate. The cake is moist and luscious on its own, but it's also delicious served the traditional way, with unsweetened whipped cream.

07 of 20

Chocolate-Red Wine Cake

Chocolate–Red Wine Cake
© Frances Janisch

A recipe in Anne Willan's 2001 Cooking with Wine inspired this fluffy, not-too-sweet cake, which uses just enough wine in the batter to give it a slight boozy flavor.

08 of 20

Applesauce-Chocolate Chip Bundt Cake

Applesauce-Chocolate Chip Bundt Cake

Kristin Donnelly is devoted to her mother's one-bowl Bundt cake because of its clove and cinnamon spices and its simplicity. As an exchange student in France, she even paid top dollar for chocolate chips and applesauce at an American market to make it for her host family. Today she adds a kick of black pepper to the batter and serves each slice with a cool-sour dollop of crème fraîche.

09 of 20

Deep Dark Chocolate Coconut Cake

Deep Dark Chocolate Coconut Cake

Feeling blue? Have a slice of this cake. The chocolate and yogurt it's made with can supposedly boost levels of the feel-good brain chemical tyrosine.

10 of 20

Molten Chocolate Cake with Marshmallow Filling

Molten Chocolate Cake with Marshmallow Filling

More decadent than molten chocolate cake: one filled with warm marshmallow, reveals former F&W editor Grace Parisi.

11 of 20

Fudgy Chocolate Layer Cake

Fudgy Chocolate Cake
© Hans Gissinger

Andrew Shotts is known for making his chocolates in small batches, creating appealing flavor combinations like mango pâte de fruit (jellied fruit paste) with passion fruit ganache. Here, he applies his talents to chocolate cake, mixing lots of buttermilk and coffee into the batter to create an incredibly moist, rich, and fudgy dessert.

12 of 20

Double-Chocolate Bundt Cake with Ganache Glaze

Double-Chocolate Bundt Cake with Ganache Glaze
© Quentin Bacon

Many Bundt cakes are heavy and buttery, but this one is surprisingly light and incredibly moist under its silky chocolate glaze. Strong-brewed coffee in the batter intensifies the chocolate flavor while cutting the sweetness.

13 of 20

Toffee Almond Crunch Cake

Toffee Almond Crunch Cake

With its layers of tender chocolate cake and chocolaty sour cream frosting, this dessert on its own is completely spectacular. But Patti Dellamonica-Bauler takes it one step further by covering it in toasted almonds and crushed toffee candy.

14 of 20

Mini Chocolate-Hazelnut Cheesecakes

Mini Chocolate-Hazelnut Cheesecakes
© Fredrika Stjärne

Grace Parisi breaks up whole, cream-filled chocolate sandwich cookies in a food processor with hazelnuts and butter to create a supercrunchy crust for these delectable little cheesecakes. The cream filling in the cookies both sweetens the crust and prevents it from becoming too crumbly.

15 of 20

Triple-Layer Chocolate Macaroon Cake

Triple-Layer Chocolate Macaroon Cake
© Anna Williams

François Payard layers chewy coconut cake with silky chocolate ganache. The beauty of the recipe is its simplicity: It has only six ingredients.

16 of 20

Warm Double-Chocolate Brownie Cakes

Feb. 13: Warm Double-Chocolate Brownie Cakes

Brownie meets cake in this fun dessert from Emily Luchetti, a cookbook author and pastry chef. She bakes the batter in muffin cups so the edges turn crispy and chewy like a brownie, but the inside becomes soft and fluffy like a cake.

17 of 20

Double-Chocolate Layer Cake

Double-Chocolate Layer Cake

"This is the most fabulous chocolate cake that I've ever made," says Ina Garten, host of Food Network's Barefoot Contessa. "It's so easy and so moist and light. There's buttermilk and a cup of coffee in the batter! The frosting is just buttercream and a little coffee."

18 of 20

Marble Cake with Chocolate Frosting

Marble Cake with Chocolate Frosting
© Yunhee Kim

This layer cake recipe combines moist, spongy cake and frosting that's a perfect balance between sweet and buttery.

19 of 20

Chocolate Cream Squares

Chocolate Cream Squares

This super-rich dessert contains chocolate whipped cream between layers of bittersweet chocolate cake topped with a fudgy chocolate glaze. It's best made one day ahead and refrigerated overnight.

20 of 20

Red Wine Chocolate Snack Cake

Red Wine Chocolate Snack Cake
Justin Walker

We all cook with red wine, adding a glug or two to enrich pan sauces and stews. Here, our culinary director Justin Chapple makes the case for baking with it as well. Cabernet Sauvignon adds fruity notes that brighten this chocolate cake, which is great for a midday snack or casual dessert.

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