A very chocolatey, moist Chocolate Fudge Cake that is similar to chocolate mud cake, but not as dense. Made with both melted chocolate and cocoa, AND topped with chocolate ganache, this one is sure to satisfying your chocolate cravings!
Super easy to make, very forgiving, no stand mixer or beater. Just one bowl and a wooden spoon!
Chocolate Fudge Cake
I may be disowned as an Australian for saying this, but I’m not the hugest fan of classic Chocolate Mud Cake. I find it too dense and doughy, and it gets stuck to the roof of my mouth. It’s very……erm…..mud-like.
Duh.
Creative writing isn’t my forte, is it?? Hey – I’m a food blogger. Not a writer! 😂
So this isn’t a classic Chocolate Mud Cake because it has a bit of lift in it, but it is still way fudgier and mud-cake like than 99% of other chocolate cakes, including my own everyday Chocolate Cake. Call it a Chocolate Fudge MUD CAKE if you want!! (Bit too much of a mouthful for me…. 🙂 )
Why I love this fudge cake so much
I know there are a LOT of chocolate cake recipes “out there”. But here’s why I love this Easy Chocolate Fudge Cake so much:
It’s intensely chocolatey – thanks to the use of both melted chocolate AND cocoa powder.
Beautifully moist and fudgy – hence the name!
Terrific flavour. It truly tastes of chocolate which, as odd as it sounds, is actually rarer than you might think.
You just need a wooden spoon. No stand mixer, no electric beater.
It’s virtually foolproof. I’ve cooked it on high for shorter periods of time, and low for longer. I’ve had to dash out of the house before it was fully cooked and left it in the oven (turned off) to finish cooking. And it always works out. Why? Because it’s so fudgey, it is actually hard to overcook so it becomes dry and it is not meant to rise very much so you don’t have to worry about that part either!
The Chocolate Ganache Frosting is crazy easy too. Cream + chocolate, melt, mix, cool. No beating!
Everyone goes mad over this. Chocolate on chocolate. Enough said!
How to make this fudgy moist cake
You would be forgiven for thinking you’re making a brownie when you start making this Chocolate Fudge Cake. Because that is in fact where the roots of this cake recipe is drawn from.
Did you know… The reason you see hot water in chocolate cake recipes is because it makes the cocoa “bloom”, making the cake taste more like chocolate!
↑↑↑ Crackage is normal! It’s kind of like that crinkly top of brownies – because this cake has lift in it from baking powder, it “bursts” through the crinkly top. But don’t worry, the cracks are less prominent once it cools (because it sinks a bit) and it’s completely hidden under Chocolate Ganache!
Difference between chocolate fudge cake and mud cake
I had someone on Instagram asking me what the difference is between Fudge Cake and Mud Cake so I thought I’d explain!! Chocolate mud cake is so dense that it cuts cleanly with perfect edges and virtually no crumbs.
In contrast, fudge cakes have more of a cake-like texture, like what you see in the close up of the slice at the top of this post.
Chocolate Ganache Frosting
I’m of the opinion that if we’re going to make a Fudgy Chocolate Cake, let’s really drive home the decadence and chocolate flavour by frosting it with chocolate ganache.
If you’re new to Chocolate Ganche, you’re going to really love this. Rather than beating icing sugar and butter for ages and ages like we do with Chocolate Buttercream, Chocolate Ganache is made simply with cream and chocolate that’s heated until the chocolate melts.
When hot, it’s a chocolate sauce you want to pour over everything.
When it cools, it has the consistency of peanut butter. Easy to spread and swirl on your cakes or cupcakes, and everything in between.
My everyday Chocolate Cake is beautifully moist and it’s the one I make most often.
But I figure we all need a blow out Chocolate Cake in our repertoire too. And this Easy Chocolate Fudge Cake is my blow-out Chocolate Cake recipe. It is rich. It is chocolatey. It is moist and fudgy. And I absolutely love it.
I hope you consider trying it! – Nagi x
Get your chocolate fix!
Everyday Chocolate Cake – try it decorated with Mirror Glaze!
Chocolate Cream Pie (outrageous!!!)
WATCH HOW TO MAKE IT
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Easy Chocolate Fudge Cake
Ingredients
- 125g / 4 oz dark chocolate chips (Note 1)
- 100g / 7 tbsp butter , salted (or unsalted butter + 1/4 tsp salt)
- 1 1/4 cups white sugar , caster / superfine best (Note 2)
- 1/4 cup oil (vegetable, canola)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 eggs , at room temperature
- 1/4 cup cocoa powder (Note 3)
- 1 cup flour , plain / all purpose (Note 4)
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 cup boiling hot water
- 1 tbsp coffee granules , optional (Note 5)
Ganache
- 1 cup heavy / thickened cream , 30%+ fat (Note 6)
- 250g / 8 oz dark chocolate chips (Note 1)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 150C/300F (standard) or 130C/265F (fan). Grease a 22 cm / 9″ springform cake pan and line with parchment / baking paper.
- Melt butter and chocolate: Place butter and chocolate in a heatproof bowl. Microwave 3 x 30 seconds on high, mix in between, until melted. Mix.
- Oil, vanilla & Sugar: Add oil, vanilla and sugar, mix to combine (this brings down batter temp).
- Eggs: Add eggs and mix until combined.
- Dry Ingredients: Sift cocoa, baking powder and flour (and coffee, if using) directly into the bowl. Mix until smooth, batter will be thin. Some small lumps is ok.
- Hot water: Add hot water. Mix until incorporated.
- Bake: Pour into the cake tin and bake for 1 hour or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out moist but clean. Check at 50 minutes. The surface will crack (sometimes badly!) but sill subside when it cools and gets covered with frosting so don’t stress!
- Cool: Remove sides from the cake pan and transfer to a cooling rack to cool. Cool completely before carefully handling to remove base (Note 7).
Ganache (Note 8)
- Place chocolate and cream in a heatproof bowl. Microwave 3 x 30 seconds, mixing in between, until chocolate melts. DO NOT let cream come to boil.
- Stir chocolate until smooth. Refrigerate for 1 to 2 hours or until thickened to a spreadable consistency like peanut butter.
- Spread over the cake – tops and sides. Use a teaspoon in a swirling motion to achieve the textured surface you see in the photos.
Recipe Notes:
Nutrition Information:
Chocolate Fudge Cake recipe published May 2016. Recipe slightly updated November 2018 with improved cake texture and a more streamlined process. New photos, new video, new words!
Let them eat cake! 10 classic cake recipes
LIFE OF DOZER
I shooed him outside thinking that brown smear on his head was 💩
Turns out it was ganache 😂 It was driving him crazy trying to figure out a way to get to it! {PS No I never give him chocolate! I have no idea how it got there}
Hi Nagi
Saturday night we had an impromptu family gathering. Cooked chilli mac cheese (for about the 100th time!) and this choccy cake.
I was my 3 older sons favourite Mum that night.
Thanks for your recipes. I havent had any failures yet!
Awesome Michelle!!!
Made yesterday! Wonderful! Chocolatey delicious! Thank you
You’re so welcome!
Hi Nagi… love your recipes. Was wondering if I could use a blancmange mould tin as I would like to have it in the shape of a Christmas wreath?
Hi Leonie, It’s quite a moist cake, I’m not sure it would hold up – but worth a try. I’d love to know if it works! ❤️
Hi Nagi
I’m looking forward to baking this cake tomorrow. It looks like it is a keeper. Thank you so much for having a recipe that doesn’t include self-rising flour, as so many recipes from Down Under do. I’ve never quite understood the reason for having self-rising flour, as it is so much more expensive that regular all purpose, and if one is a serious baker, one always has fresh AP flour and fresh baking powder on hand.
Love the photos of Dozer, he seems to be such a gentle creature.
Lexie
Hi Alexis! To be honest, the reason I use normal flour is because to make self raising flour, it’s just flour + baking powder so to me, it doesn’t make sense to keep 2 kinds of flour on hand 🙂 N x PS Dozer? Gentle? Nooo…. the name gives a hint. BULL-Dozer…
In Australia plain flour & self raising flour are the same price so it’s not a financial decision.
Yum! How about you do fancy writing with chocolate. Ok confession WHAT DID YOU DO TO DOZER?? You to seem to be having love hate relationship. We had wet and cold, cold week. Don’t eat to much for f cake you’ll have belly ache., save some for Xmas……..
Sorry, very sorry SPELLING IS SHOCKING, NOT SURE WHAT IS HAPPENING.
I did wonder when I read “f cake”…. I thought you were SWEARING! 😂
This was perfect for intense chocolate cravings! Chocolate cakes that don’t taste distinctly of chocolate make me nuts! When I want chocolate, I want something that doesn’t just look chocolate–it’s got to taste like chocolate too. And, I like fudgy cakes, though those are my husband’s least favorite type, so I mostly make the chocolate cakes that he prefers, since I like most good chocolate cakes regardless of texture. Sometimes, though, I need a treat too, and this was it! Very good!
I think mud cakes is called something different in the US, but I forget what exactly. I think I know the type as the most dense of maybe all cakes? Similar to flour-less cakes in texture? I prefer fudgy to that density. But, also like Oprah’s chef Art Smith’s Aunt Evelyn’s chocolate cake with chocolate-pecan frosting that gets poured onto the cake while warm, and also chocolate Mayonnaise cake, and the Everyday Chocolate cake here, too. It can be difficult just deciding which one to make!
You are talking my language Wynn! I know exactly what you mean – chocolate cakes that don’t actually taste like chocolate drives me crazy! I’m SO glad you enjoyed this! N x
Hi Nagi,
Nothing to do with the recipe, but I noticed your baking paper in the pan that appeared to have fold marks, and how neat the edge is where side meets base. I was just wondering if you buy pre-made sheets or you go to a lot of trouble to make it look so good, mine never look that good 🙂
Hi Ian! I’ll shoot a little video and link it to all my cake recipes 🙂 Here is how I do it (it’s so fast!): tear off a square piece of paper. Then fold it into quarters, then fold a couple more times until you have a thin triangle with a pointy end. Line up that pointy end in the middle of the pan, then snip at the end of the pan. Unfold – and voila! You have a round(ish) cake pan liner that fits your pan perfectly! Then what I do is just tear off 2 thin strips of paper and use them for the walls. N x
Love the “Easy Chocolate Fudge Cake” and wondering if you have a similar version of a White Cake? Love all your recipes – thanks!
Yum! I love chocolate and I will eat it first b4 eating my dinner, if I’m craving it! Just not the chocolate on Dozer’s head though!😂💩😝
I can just picture the horrified look on your face, when you saw that on Dozer’s head and shooing him outside. Dozer is lucky it’s not around here where it’s freezing outside! Brrr!
It won’t let me give you 5 stars N! I’m sure it’s my stupid browser cuz I have been having alot of trouble with it for almost a week now! Grrr!
I was positive it was 💩!!!! Disgusting! And I was in the the middle of something and couldn’t deal with it so I just chased him outside!! 😂
Poor Dozer! 😂
Wow! The 5 stars finally worked this time! Stupid phone! 😂
hi nagi: my 14 yr old wanted to bake a cake on this rainy day and i told him to use this receipe cause it’s easy peasy. just double checking- no salt? he ended up adding a wee bit as we are not using salted butter. will let you know how this turns out- cake is in the oven!
Hi Judy! He made the right call adding a pinch if using unsalted butter! Hope you both love it! N x
The hot water is missing from the written recipe. Can I use a regular 9in round cake pan? And could I double the recipe and make two layers and stack them? Or will the cake be too delicate to stack?
OOPS!! 😂 Fixed, thanks. Regular cake pan is fine, just cool 100% in the pan then be super careful turning it out because it’s a fudgy cake so it’s a bit more delicate than normal cake. See the note in the recipe about this. 2 layers would be amazing – but rich!!! 🙂 I’d probably make once batch of the ganache for the outside, then a ganache using milk chocolate (so it’s paler) for the inside) so when you cut it open, you get a nice contrast between the dark chocolate cake and paler filling. Hmm. No I’m wondering if I should post a recipe for a layered chocolate blow-out cake! 😂 N x
I know it’d be rich, might do a peanut butter or salted caramel filling, then cover with ganache. I’m looking at different ideas for a bday cake for my new Father in Law
OMG…. salted caramel OR peanut butter…. now you have me thinking! Should I do an Outrageous Layered Chocolate Cake?? 😈
I’m sure there are a million flavor possibilities and they’d all be amazing!
Definitely!
I’ve asked the same question-lol. Thought it was just me 😉
Nope! Just me losing the plot 🙂 At least this time I didn’t leave the CHOCOLATE out of the chocolate cake… not like that time I forgot the pork in the roast pork 😂
love the music in the video,did your beef stew used ox tail lovely,chicken with garlic & kale my wife loved it so i had to do it twice in one week.
Oooh! That stew would be amazing with ox tail!! N x
Hi Nagi!
I love all of your recipes. Thanks so much for sharing them 🙂
Just a note: The recipe does not list hot water anywhere I can see (I may have missed it-lol). If I hadn’t watched the video, I wouldn’t know to add it. Is it one cup U.S.? And if hot coffee, the same measurement?
Cheers!
Cyndi
Yikes! 🙄 Thanks Cynthia. At least it’s not as bad as that time I forgot to include PORK in a pork recipe! 😂 Yes if using coffee, the same amount 🙂 N x
Hi Nagi
No Parchment paper in our country. What to use instead. Thanks
Grease the pan well! And run a knife around the edge to loosen if it looks stuck 🙂 N x
Lovely recipe and SO EASY too! Think I will make it as soon as tomorrow!
Thank you loads on the note about Japan.
I live here for the time being and here, (shameful to admit) I actually don’t have a measuring cup. I always use a scale for my baking and measuring (if any recipe only says cups, I use a conversion chart…) because 1. I am very paranoid and 2. the kitchen space is a little limited for tools etc! (another reason why this recipe is perfect. NO stand mixer needed!) I guess I will stick with my no-cup-lifestyle and save some coins 😛
Not shameful at all! Space is precious in Japan!! N xx
I’ll have to find out if this recipe is as good as your Easter chocolate cake. I have made that cake a dozen times since Easter with great success. Love your recipes
They are both equally great! Different occasions call for different types of cake! 😂 N x
whipping cream is thickened cream I think the proportions are off I believe it should only be half a cup of cream
Thickened cream in Australia is whipping cream with added stabilizers. It has a much thicker consistency to ordinary whipping cream in Canada and the US. Whipping cream is thin but becomes thick through whipping. Hope this helps.
Thanks Wendy!! Sarah – it’s the same effect as heavy cream in Canada and the US 🙂 Also if you ever come across a recipe by an Australian which calls for thickened cream, use heavy cream 🙂 N x
Hi Nagi,
I absolutely love your recipes, it’s my go to for all my cooking these days.
Can I ask, is it okay to use dark chocolate 45%cocoa solids for the cake? And milk melts for the ganache? I don’t want to ruin the recipe just trying to use what’s in the cupboard 😉
Many thanks
Janna
Made this for my son’s birthday.. what a big hit.. hubby loved it and said it was the best cake he has ever eaten..
Awesome!!! Glad you enjoyed this AKF! N x ❤️
Hi! I was wondering if I can cut back on the sugar in half or 3/4 of the written amount? Also, can I sub the butter and go for oil all the way?