Have you ever wondered what Ina Garten considered to be the best chocolate cake? In a February 10 Instagram video, Garten shared that her Beatty’s Chocolate Cake is the ultimate, and was first served to her by her friend Michael at a dinner party. Since then, it’s become a go-to recipe for all her special occasions, and you can now buy it online if you don’t have the time to bake it yourself.
“I was like, ‘this is the best chocolate cake I’ve ever had. Where does it come from?’ And [Michael] said, ‘Well, my grandmother made it.’ And so he gave me the recipe for the chocolate cake,” Garten told Goldbelly in a recent video.
Michael’s grandmother, Beatty, would make chocolate cakes for people on her husband’s milk route and her husband would deliver the cakes alongside fresh bottles of milk. And Beatty’s tradition still stands because you can get your Beatty’s chocolate cake delivered to your door, too.
“It’s a really rich chocolate cake,” Garten says in the video, “and the secret ingredient is a cup of coffee in every cake. It gives the chocolate incredible flavor…It’s a classic American chocolate cake, but it just tastes better than you expect it to.”
Or, if you want to put your baking skills to the test, you can follow along with Garten’s recipe, too!
The intermediate-level Beatty’s chocolate cake recipe requires the normal ingredient list and set of baking equipment typical to any other cake recipe. After combining the wet and dry ingredients, Garten’s recipe calls for that famous cup of coffee to be mixed in evenly before placing the batter into pans.
Once the two chocolate cake rounds have been baked and cooled, Garten’s equally beloved chocolate buttercream frosting recipe will make it complete. You’ll need to channel your inner Barefoot Contessa here since her frosting recipe requires a bit more attention to detail and skill.
While chocolate chips might be a usual go-to in other chocolate frosting recipes, Garten omits them from her own. “I use Valrhona Le Noir 56% Cacao Semisweet Chocolate,” she notes in her recipe. “You can use also use a good bittersweet chocolate but don’t use chocolate chips because they have stabilizers in them.”
Again, Garten requires coffee to add extra richness to the taste of her buttercream frosting — combining dissolved instant coffee granules with the frosting’s butter mixture. Once the chocolate buttercream frosting has been made, it should be spread (not whipped) onto the cakes.
Garten likes to serve her Beatty’s chocolate cake with a bit of crème anglaise underneath (or, melted vanilla ice cream, as Garten suggests). Grab the cake over on the Goldbelly website, or check out the recipe on Garten’s blog.
Before you go, check out the gallery below:
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