Hot Vs Cold Coffee: Which Boosts Chocolate Cake Batter Best?

Home cooks and professional chefs have long sworn by coffee as the secret ingredient to the richest chocolate cakes. Much like salt brings out the flavors in a baking recipe without making said recipe salty, coffee brings out the flavor of chocolate in the cake without making it taste like coffee. In fact, Ina Garten's recipe, called Beatty's Chocolate Cake, uses freshly brewed hot coffee in the batter and instant espresso in the frosting and is so popular that you can get it delivered by Goldbelly for $99.95. 

While some call for room temperature or cold coffee in the cake batter to avoid any scrambling of the eggs when they're mixed in the hot liquid, using hot coffee in the chocolate cake batter will give your cake the boldest flavor and best texture. It will also allow the cocoa powder in your chocolate cake to bloom — the cocoa releases its full flavor potential when mixed with a hot liquid. In addition to blooming the cocoa powder, some cooks say using hot coffee in chocolate cake batter results in a fluffier crumb.

This trick is easy to implement in any of your favorite chocolate cake recipes; Some say to replace the water or milk called for in the cake batter with the same amount of hot coffee. Other recipes, such as Garten's, use hot coffee in addition to other wet ingredients like vegetable oil and buttermilk.

You can use your favorite coffee machine or brewing method to get the hot coffee you need for your chosen chocolate cake recipe, or you can use instant espresso granules. To do so, dissolve ½ teaspoon of instant espresso powder in 1 tablespoon of hot water, and add it to the cake batter. Withhold 1 tablespoon of another wet ingredient the recipe calls for, like milk, to account for the extra liquid added to the espresso powder. If you have an espresso machine, you can use a shot of espresso instead, but again, subtract an equal amount of liquid from the recipe's primary wet ingredient.

Thanks to cake's the improved texture from the coffee, your chocolate cake will be extra moist, so you can enjoy those leftovers for longer without them drying out. Homemade cake, stored in the fridge, should typically be eaten within five to seven days (but if you use this trick, you'll have cake so good we doubt it'll be around for that long).