Chocolate Velvet Cake
This dreamy chocolate velvet cake is rich, soft, and ultra moist, thanks to the cream cheese in the batter!
It has a wonderful velvety texture and just the right amount of chocolate- it isn't overly rich but is guaranteed to satisfy your chocolate cravings.
You are going to love this recipe!
Table of Contents
How to Make Chocolate Velvet Cake
You can find the full, printable recipe for this delicious chocolate cake further down in this post, but here is a quick rundown of our steps!
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour 3 (8x2) round pans
- In a medium bowl combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder. Whisk for 30 seconds to blend and set aside.
- In a separate bowl, add the milk and vanilla. Set aside.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer, (using a paddle attachment if using a stand mixer), add the softened butter and softened cream cheese. Mix until smooth.
- Gradually add the sugar. Mix on medium speed for 3 minutes until fluffy. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl.
- Add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each until the yellow of the yolk has blended.
- Prepare the ½ cup of very hot water for the next step.
- With the mixer on low speed, you will add the flour mixture alternately with the wet ingredients (three additions of the flour mixture alternating with two additions of wet.) So, to begin, add about ⅓ of the flour mixture, followed by the milk, then half of the remaining flour mixture followed by the very hot water, and end with the remaining flour mixture. Mix just until incorporated.
- Divide the batter between the three prepared pans and bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes. The cake layers are done when a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached.
- Cool the pans on cooling rack 5 to 10 minutes then turn out.
Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting
We frosted and filled our chocolate velvet cake with a luscious chocolate cream cheese frosting- one of our favorites!
This simple recipe combines butter, softened cream cheese, confectioners sugar, unsweetened cocoa powder, and vanilla.
It makes a great filling and frosting, and it's great for piping borders and small decorations too! As with any cream cheese frosting recipe, it is a bit on the softer side.
If it seems a little soft, just pop the bowl of frosting or piping bag in the refrigerator for a few minutes to thicken up the consistency a bit.
Our Chocolate Buttercream is another easy and delicious option for a chocolate frosting!
Assembling & Decorating the Cake
- Time to put our chocolate velvet cake together! Place the first cake layer on your cake base or pedestal. Spread with a layer of chocolate cream cheese frosting.
- Repeat for the next two cake layers.
- Next, apply a thin crumb coat of the frosting. At this point, I like to chill the cake in the freezer for about 15 minutes to firm everything up before applying the final coat of frosting.
- This is an optional step but I think it makes decorating easier!
- Apply the second coat of frosting and decorate however you like. For today's cake, I smoothed over my second coat of frosting with a bench scraper to smooth it before combing it with a cake comb to add the lines around the sides.
- After cleaning up the top edge of the cake with my offset spatula, I added a ruffle border to the top and bottom of the cake using a petal tip 104.
- Ruffle/petal tips are very easy to work with. Just use an up and down motion as you apply pressure to the piping bag. The small end of the opening should be facing out for a thin edge to your ruffle. (See our Tutorial on Ruffle Piping Tips for more details!)
- I also added a few polka dots to the top of the cake with a small round tip 3.
Here's a look after slicing.
Recipe FAQs
More Chocolate Cakes to Try
We have so many favorite chocolate cakes to share with you! Here are just a few of our favorites but you can find our full collection in this roundup: 50+ of the Best Chocolate Cake Recipes!
Some of our most popular are our Chocolate Bundt Cake, German Chocolate Cake, Black Forest Cake, and Chocolate Sour Cream Cake.
Here are a few others!
Thanks so much or stopping by! We hope that you enjoy the Chocolate Velvet Cake. Don't miss our full collection of Cake Recipes, including cake recipes from scratch as well as cake mix recipes!
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Chocolate Velvet Cake
Ingredients
For the Cake
- 1 8oz (226g) package cream cheese softened
- 2 sticks unsalted butter, softened (226g)
- 2 cups (400g) sugar
- 4 large eggs room temperature (you can also place eggs in a bowl of warm water for 5 minutes to warm them.)
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 cup (82g) unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted (measure then sift)
- 2 teaspoons (8g) baking powder
- ½ teaspoon (3g) baking soda
- ½ teaspoon (3g) salt
- 1 teaspoon (4g) vanilla extract
- ½ cup (120g) milk
- ½ cup (120g) very hot water
For the Cream Cheese Frosting
- 2 sticks (226g) unsalted butter, softened
- 2 teaspoons (8g) vanilla extract
- 6 to 6 ½ cups (690g to 747g) powdered sugar (Adjust amount to your liking.)
- ¼ cup (20g) unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted.
- 16 oz cream cheese (total weight 452g) (We used two 8 oz packages, full fat)
Instructions
For the Cake
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour 3 (8x2) round pans
- In a medium bowl combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder. Whisk for 30 seconds to blend and set aside.
- In a separate bowl, add the milk and vanilla. Set aside.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer, (using a paddle attachment if using a stand mixer), add the softened butter and softened cream cheese. Mix until smooth. Gradually add the sugar. Mix on medium speed for 3 minutes until fluffy. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl.
- Add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each until the yellow of the yolk has blended.
- Prepare the ½ cup of very hot water for the next step.
- With the mixer on low speed, add about ⅓ of the flour mixture, followed by the milk, then half of the remaining flour mixture followed by the very hot water, and end with the remaining flour mixture. Mix just until incorporated.
- Add the batter to the three prepared pans and bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes. The cake layers are done when a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached.
- Cool the pans on cooling rack 5 to 10 minutes then turn out.
For the Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting
- Cut the butter into slices and add to the bowl of your mixer. Beat on low to medium speed until the butter is softened and smooth.
- Add cocoa and mix until blended.
- Cut the cream cheese into pieces and add to the butter, beating at low to medium speed until incorporated.
- Add the vanilla. Gradually add the powdered sugar beating on low speed until blended.
- Increase mixing speed to medium and beat until fluffy, don't over beat. If beaten too long it will become very soft. If this happens, just refrigerate for 10 to 15 minutes.
- This frosting will pipe best if used while still very cool. You can make it in advance, refrigerate and when ready to use let it soften slightly (do not microwave) and remix.
- Will frost a 3 layer 8 or 9 inch cake.
Assembling the Cake and Decorating
- I like to fill the cake layers, frost a thin coat (crumb coat) of frosting and then chill the cake in the freezer for 10-15 minutes to firm it up before applying the final coat of frosting. (You can refrigerate the bowl of frosting during this time also if it is getting soft).
- After applying my final coat of frosting, I went over it with a bench scraper (or spatula) and then combed it with a cake comb. Remove the excess frosting around the top edge of the cake with a spatula. I then applied top and bottom borders with a petal/ruffle tip 104 as well as a few dots on top with a tip 3.
Notes
Loved This Recipe?!
Hi! what is the reason/purpose of the hot water? could I just use all buttermilk instead of milk and hot water?
thanks!
Hello,
Thank you for all your wonderful recipes.
Would you be kind enough to provide the weight of the flour for the chocolate velvet cake in grams as well.
I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks
Hi - I noticed your other velvet cake recipes call for cake flour but this chocolate velvet recipe calls for all purpose flour. Should we be using cake flour for this recipe or is there something in the way it bakes that makes using all purpose flour better for the chocolate flavor version?
Hi Teresa- that's a great question. I cannot remember if we made this one with cake flour and tested it against the AP one, or if I just used AP out of habit as most of our chocolate cakes call for AP (with the exception I think of our Chocolate Buttermilk Cake).
I will test this soon with cake flour and get back to you! My guess is that it would turn out with cake flour also. (Just as a side note, I often use White Lily for my AP flour which has a slightly lower protein content than other brands of AP- but not quite as low as cake flour. Will let you know once I've tested it!)
Hi I made this cake and it came out flat and almost like a Brownie. Now I see that the recipe was updated on 8/2023 **This recipe was updated in August 2023 (To add ½ cup hot water, ½ cup milk rather than a whole cup of milk)
The recipe only called for 1/2 cup of milk. I feel this was deceiving.