Chocolate Cake Recipes
Our vintage recipe collection contains thousands of recipes and of the recipes, the “dessert” category is by far the largest.
Within our dessert category, “cakes” and “chocolate cakes” are a huge majority.
Since we have so many of these recipes, we are rounding up the recipes and publishing them by cake “type” to make your search easier.
If you are looking for your new favorite cake recipe, view all of our Cake Recipes in our collection.
Join our Vintage Recipe Facebook Group to discuss and find “new” old recipes to enjoy.
Links to find other recipes:
Chocolate Cake Overview
Did you know that National Chocolate Cake Day is on January 27th? January is also National Baking month!!!
Click here to view all January Food Holidays.
Looking for more sweet goodies? Click here to view our Dessert Recipes.
Cake Baking Tips
- Make sure your ingredients are not too cold, if they are, your cake may be “tougher” and not as fluffy as you may want it. Room temperature is perfect for your ingredients.
- Temperature matters, so while you don’t want your ingredients too cold, you also don’t want your ingredients to be too warm either. Again, room temperature is perfect for your ingredients.
- Choose the right baking pan and when baking cakes, I prefer the “shiny” cake pans versus dark ones since they deflect heat which will help with premature browning of your cake.
- Use cocoa powder instead of flour when you “grease and flour” your pans.
- Don’t overmix your batter.
- Parchment paper is your friend when baking. I will cut the shape to line the bottom of my pan to make sure the top of my cake is perfect.
- Dissolve your powdered cocoa in a little hot water so it doesn’t clump in the batter. (Thanks Karen G. from our Facebook group for the tip!)
Other Vintage Dessert Recipes
Chocolate Cake History
From Wikipedia:
The history of chocolate cake goes back to 1764 when Dr. James Baker discovered how to make chocolate by grinding cocoa beans between two massive circular millstones.
In 1828, Coenraad van Houten of the Netherlands developed a mechanical extraction method for extracting the fat from cacao liquor resulting in cacao butter and the partly defatted cacao, a compacted mass of solids that could be sold as it was “rock cacao” or ground into powder.
The processes transformed chocolate from an exclusive luxury to an inexpensive daily snack.
A process for making silkier and smoother chocolate called conching was developed in 1879 by Rodolphe Lindt and made it easier to bake with chocolate, as it amalgamates smoothly and completely with cake batters.
From 1890 to 1900, chocolate recipes were mostly for chocolate drinks, and its presence in cakes was only in fillings and glazes.
In 1886, American cooks began adding chocolate to the cake batter, to make the first chocolate cakes in the US.
Below are the chocolate cake recipes we have published to date by “type” of cake:
Angelica Johnson
Friday 14th of August 2020
Trying to find a recipe that was dark chocolate with milk chocolate frosting. Was layered and cooked in a jelly roll pan. Cut into 1/3