Go Back

Find more recipes at charlotteslivelykitchen.com

A slice of chocolate birthday cake filled with chocolate buttercream and covered in white fondant icing with multi-coloured fondant dots.

Chocolate Birthday Cake

This chocolate birthday cake is simple to make, tastes delicious and is perfect for decorating for a special celebration. 
4.82 from 138 votes
Active Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 45 minutes
Servings: 12

INGREDIENTS

Metric - US Cups/Ounces
  • 200 g self-raising flour
  • 40 g cocoa powder
  • 230 g caster sugar
  • 4 large eggs
  • 230 g soft margarine - you can also use softened unsalted butter too
  • ¼ tsp vanilla extract
  • 100 g milk chocolate - choose something from the baking aisle in the supermarket as it will cope well with the heat in the oven without going grainy.
  • 2 tsp milk

INSTRUCTIONS

  • Pre-heat your oven to 160ºC/140ºC fan.
  • Line your tins (2x 20cm sandwich tins) with liners or greaseproof paper.
  • Grate the milk chocolate (100g).
  • Put all of the ingredients into a large bowl (200g self-raising flour, 40g cocoa powder, 230g caster sugar, 4 large eggs, 230g soft margarine, ¼ tsp vanilla extract, 2 tsp milk and the grated chocolate) mix on a low speed until fully combined.
  • Divide the mixture evenly between the two tins and spread it out so it’s pretty even (it doesn’t have to be perfect as it’ll even out in the oven, but roughly flat is good).
  • Put the tins in the oven and cook for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes put a skewer in the middle and check if it comes out clean. If it does it’s done, if not pop it back in for a couple more minutes and check again.
  • Once cooked, remove the cakes from the oven and leave them to cool in the tins for 10 minutes.
  • After 10 minutes, remove the cakes from their tins and pop them onto a wire rack to cool completely before decorating.

NOTES

If you would like to make this cake in a different size then you can use my chocolate cake calculator to find the ingredients you need.
You can find my recipe for the chocolate buttercream to cover the cake here.
If you want to make this cake in one deep tin rather than two sandwich tins then the cooking time will need to be increased to 45-50 minutes.

NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION

Calories: 343kcal | Carbohydrates: 38g | Protein: 5g | Fat: 20g | Saturated Fat: 5g | Cholesterol: 54mg | Sodium: 204mg | Potassium: 119mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 23g | Vitamin A: 765IU | Calcium: 24mg | Iron: 1.1mg

Any nutritional information provided is the estimated nutritional information per serving. Please refer to my guide to Charlotte’s Lively Kitchen nutritional information if you would like to learn more about how this is calculated.