Chocolate Cake for Carving - The Best Sculpting Cake Recipe
One of the most important things necessary to sculpt a novelty cake is a perfect base. A cake that can be cut and manipulated without falling apart. A cake with a soft crumb and yet taste delicious. This chocolate cake perfect for carving will prove the best sculpting cake recipe for you.
When you ask a person how they like their cake, almost everyone will say rich and moist. But carving a rich and moist cake is definitely difficult and not recommended for novelty cakes and a cake not rich and moist is definitely not desirable. So... MUST find the right balance. I think I did. This is the best sculpting cake recipe you will love.
About this sculpting cake
I wish you could see how soft and moist my carving cake recipes are.
I have been using this chocolate cake recipe for carving - for a long time now and carved many cakes very successfully. It's not as dense as a pound or sponge cake but not as delicate as a simple moist, classic chocolate, or death by chocolate cake recipes.
I strongly recommended that you freeze the cake for an hour at least before you carve it. Freezing the cake helps with fewer crumbs. So while I say this is dense it's also rich and delicious. Some of the cakes I've made with this chocolate as well as my vanilla cake for carving recipe have had rave reviews from my customers.
Ingredients and Substitutes (Save/Pin)
- Butter - I prefer to use unsalted butter so I can control the quantity of salt in my recipe. And yet, if salted butter is all you have, go ahead and use it. Just omit salt in the recipe.
- Brown sugar - contributes to a nice soft tender crumb and gives a nice color. The molasses in the brown sugar adds a caramel-like flavor too.
- Eggs - Always use large size eggs when baking unless specified. The size of the eggs varies these days significantly. So as a guide one large egg weighs between 50 to 60 grams.
- Vanilla - A good quality vanilla will make a huge difference in anything you make. Premium vanilla can be expensive, which is why I make my homemade vanilla extract, bean paste or sugar.
- All-purpose flour - Yes, regular plain flour (maida) is all you need for this cake. And, since self-raising flours contain leavening they must be used with caution.
- Cocoa Powder - I use regular Dutch-processed cocoa powder for my cake baking.
Useful Tips and Tools
- If you bake often, it would be a good idea to invest in a cake mixer. Because often we try to mix by hand and then we are too tired to give it enough creaming or mixing. So, if you are making this cake go ahead and remove that K-Mix or Kitchen Aid from your kitchen cabinet. You don't have to buy an expensive stand mixer, a simple hand mixer works great too.
- I believe in weighing ingredients by weight, which makes my kitchen scale one of the most valuable items when baking.
- The same goes for my measuring cups and measuring spoons. It's always a good idea to have these handy and use them when baking rather than trying to guess measurements.
- I think one set of baking pans is a must for anyone a home baker. I like to bake three layers rather than torte my cakes and it bakes faster too. For most of my layer cake recipes on this blog, I use 3 x 6-inch round pans
- Once baked always invert your cakes on a cooling rack. This encourages air circulation and prevents the steam from pooling at the bottom of the pan.
- Every oven works differently. So the baking times are just guidelines. In the case of cakes, a skewer inserted in the center is a great indication. If the cake bakes too quick or too slow compared to the time given it might be a good idea to check if your oven needs calibration. An oven thermometer is a great little gadget to help keep the oven temperature in check. All you need to do then is adjust the temperature accordingly
Chocolate cake perfect for carving or the best sculpting cake recipe (Save/Pin)
- Preheat your oven to 160 C / 320 F.
- Grease and line the baking pan you plan to use for your novelty cake.
- Have all your ingredients ready at room temperature.
- Sift dry ingredients - flour, salt, cocoa powder, and baking powder.
- Cream soft room temperature butter, sugar, and eggs until light and fluffy.
- Add the flour mixture followed by the Buttermilk and coffee in three batches.
- Lastly, add vanilla and give it one more mix.
- Your batter is ready.
- Pour into your baking pan/pans and bake for about 30 to 40 minutes until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean.
- If using two pans the baking time will be reduced - you can check at about 25 mins.
- Cool in the pan for 10 minutes.
- After 10 minutes invert on to an oven rack to cool completely.
- Once cooled wrap in two cling wraps, followed by aluminum foil.
- Place in the freezer for at least one hour before you carve into it.
How much cake do I need?
One of the most common questions I get is how much cake do I need? When it comes to Novelty cake it's difficult for me to say.
For example, I can't say you need two of these for a car cake. Why? because it depends on the size of your car template. So this cake serves 15 to 20 people. But, it can be double and more successfully.
So, if you choose to make a cake for 60 then you'd multiply the recipe times 3 and follow the same method as below.
Chocolate Cake Perfect for Carving The BEST Sculpting Cake Recipe
Print Pin RateDescription
Ingredients
Makes 2 x 7-inch cakes or one 9 x 13-inch rectangle cake
- 8 oz (226 g) Butter (2 sticks, 1 cup) unsalted, room temperature
- 1 cup (220 g) Brown sugar light
- 2 cups (250 g) All-purpose flour
- ¼ tsp Salt
- ¾ cup (65 g) Cocoa powder
- 1 ½ tsp Baking powder
- ¼ cup (60 ml) Coffee brewed (1 tsp coffee powder in ¼ cup water)
- 1 cup (240 ml) Buttermilk
- 4 Eggs large
- 2 tsp Vanilla Extract
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 160 C / 320 F.
- Grease and line the baking pan you plan to use for your novelty cake.
- Have all your ingredients ready at room temperature.
- Sift dry ingredients - flour, salt, cocoa powder, and baking powder.
- Cream soft room temperature butter, sugar, and eggs until light and fluffy.
- Add the flour mixture followed by the Buttermilk and coffee in three batches.
- Lastly, add vanilla and give it one more mix.
- Your batter is ready.
- Pour into your baking pan/pans and bake for about 30 to 40 minutes until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean.
- If using two pans the baking time will be reduced - you can check at about 25 mins.
- Cool in the pan for 10 minutes.
- After 10 minutes invert on to an oven rack to cool completely.
- Once cooled wrap in two cling wraps, followed by aluminum foil.
- Place in the freezer for at least one hour before you carve into it.
Recipe Notes
Equipment
Nutrition Information
The nutrition information and metric conversion are calculated automatically. I cannot guarantee its accuracy. If this data is important to you please verify with your trusted nutrition calculator. Thank you
Frequently asked questions
I use all-purpose flour. And yet, you can also use cake flour. Cake flour is manufactured for cakes and has a finer texture than all-purpose flour. Also, the protein content in cake flour is higher than AP flour.
Using unsalted butter means you can control the amount of salt in the recipe. Having said that, you can use salted butter in most cakes and omit the salt in the recipe.
Often people think a dense cake can be kept for longer. True, it does have a longer shelf life than most other cakes. And yet, even a dense cake will stay at room temperature for only 3 to 4 days. You can keep it longer if you wrap well in plastic and keep it in the fridge.
This chocolate carving is delicious on its own, especially when it's fresh so don't be afraid to use it for not just sculpting. I like to use a butter-based or chocolate-based frosting for my sculpted cakes. The butter and chocolate both firm with chilled which works in favor of cutting and manipulating the cake as needed.
For most of my sculpted cakes, I use any one of these frostings
Velvet American buttercream,
Vanilla Buttercream Frosting, Chocolate Buttercream Frosting
Chocolate Ganache or white chocolate ganache
Don't be afraid to try my other flavored buttercream recipes as well - see more than 30 plus buttercream frosting recipes
No, this recipe works best with eggs but I do have an eggless chocolate fudge cake that I have used for carving and is very popular with my visitors on this blog.
The best test for cake doneness is when you insert a skewer into the center of the cake and it comes out clean without any cake better. Additionally, you will also notice that the cake starts to pull away from the edges of the pan.
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