Matcha Chocolate Cake

In honor of my roommate’s birthday, I decided to make a cake with one of our favorite flavors, matcha! This one bowl chocolate cake from Allrecipes has been a go-to of mine since middle school, because it’s so quick and yummy (I’ve made a few alterations over the years). Buttercream frosting is another recipe staple that everyone should have in their vault, again, because it is super easy and tastes exponentially better than store bought frosting. Buttercream is easily customizable and I’ve made everything from coffee to oreo, and now matcha. If you’re looking for a unique, fancy and relatively easy dessert that’s sure to impress, you’ve got it here!

I forgot to take a photo of the cake before it got demolished at the birthday party, but I promise it looked just as good as it tasted!

(An altered version of) Allrecipes One Bowl Chocolate Cake 

Tools:

• Whisk or electric mixer (stand or hand)
• Rubber spatula 
• Measuring cups and measuring spoons 
• Mixing bowl
• Way to boil water (kettle or pot)
• Oven 
• Cake pan, any shape or size
• Parchment paper

Ingredients:

• 1 ½  cups white sugar
• 1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
• 1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup milk (oat)
• ½ cup vegetable oil (or coconut)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 cup boiling water or hot coffee

Instructions: 

1. Preheat your oven to 360º F. Cover the bottom of your cake pan with parchment paper. Don’t worry about the sides, you can butter them if you want, but the bottom of the pan is always the hardest when it comes time to remove the cake.
2. Mix together your sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
3. Create a hole in the center of your dry mix where you will put your eggs, milk (I used oat), melted coconut oil and vanilla extract. 
4. Once your batter is mixed, it will be quite thick. At this point, boil your water, and make your coffee if you’re using it! Coffee is often used by bakers to bring out the taste of the chocolate, so you won’t be able to taste the coffee much if at all but it really adds to the final cake. Once your hot coffee is made, or your hot water has boiled, slowly pour it into your batter. Be sure to mix well as you pour so the eggs don’t cook. 
5. Once your batter is ready, dump it into a pan, using your spatula to scrape every bit out. Smooth the batter and tap the pan down a few times to pop the air bubbles. 
6. Put your cake in the oven and bake for 30 minutes. Once the timer goes off, test to see if it’s done by sticking a chopstick in the center. If the cake needs a few more minutes, give it more time in 5 minute increments.
7. Take it out to cool when done! If you’re wanting to take the cake out of the pan, let it rest for 15 minutes before running a knife around the edges. Then you can place a plate on top and flip it. (I left mine in the sheet pan because I took mine to a birthday party and it was more of a casual serving method.) Let cool almost completely before frosting.

Matcha Buttercream Frosting

Tools:

• Hand or stand electric mixer (necessity!)
• Rubber spatula 
• Measuring spoons

Ingredients: 

• Two sticks (1 cup) of butter (salted)
• Powdered sugar
• Vanilla extract 
• Matcha powder 

Instructions: 

1. You should have left your butter out to reach room temperature, so that it could soften before you’ve started making your cake. You’ll also need an electric mixer, a crucial tool for this frosting. I don’t think it’s possible to make it without one. I borrowed mine from a friend.
2. Put your room temperature butter in your large mixing bowl. Beat it on high heat with your mixer for a long time, 5-10 minutes, until the butter is fluffy and pale.
3. Add two teaspoons of vanilla extract to your butter, and whip until incorporated. Then add a tablespoon. of matcha powder and mix that in. You’ll add more later, to taste.
4. Add about a cup of powdered sugar and beat for 5 minutes. 
5. Taste your frosting. It will definitely need more powdered sugar, so dump about another cup in and whisk for another 5 minutes. This time, taste to see if you’d like to add more matcha powder, adding a tiny bit at a time. Add enough powdered sugar that your frosting is sweet, but not insanely, or to taste. Honestly, I didn’t measure, but I probably added about two-three cups.
6. Once your frosting is as sweet and matcha-y as you like, you’re done! This recipe is time consuming, but simple and hard to mess up. Dump or pipe it onto your cooled cake and spread around until distributed evenly across the surface.
7. Now the best part, decorate! I wrote some silly words in edible writing gel, added candles and cut up some strawberries to look like scales. The strawberries were really the thing that brought the whole cake together, with their fresh and tart flavor. 

Sing Happy Birthday, serve up your hungry party guests, enjoy and meet me back for another installment of Dormiliciouse!