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Chocolate Pound Cake

This decadent Chocolate Pound Cake is rich, moist, and melt-in-your-mouth delicious! It’s the best homemade cake recipe for chocolate lovers.

Make sure to try my Classic Pound Cake recipe too!

This Is My Favorite Chocolate Pound Cake Recipe!

I am obsessed with this chocolate cake! It’s made with cocoa powder and coffee granules to give it the richest chocolate flavor. Every bite is a chocolatey dream come true!

This pound cake is made in a bundt pan, so it looks pretty before it’s even decorated. You can leave it plain or add a fun topping like ganache or powdered sugar. If you’re a chocoholic, this cake recipe is for you!

Recipe Ingredients

  • Instant Coffee Granules
  • Hot Water
  • Buttermilk: If you don’t have buttermilk on hand, make this simple buttermilk substitute!
  • Butter: Bring your butter to room temperature.
  • Sugar
  • Eggs
  • Vanilla Extract
  • Kosher Salt
  • Baking Powder
  • Cocoa Powder: Use unsweetened cocoa powder for this recipe.
  • All Purpose Flour
  • Powdered Sugar – if you want to dust the top!
A Slice of Chocolate Pound Cake Topped with Powdered Sugar

How to Make Chocolate Pound Cake

  1. Prepare for Baking: Preheat the oven to 325°F. Generously coat a 10 – 12 cup bundt pan with baking spray and set it aside.
  2. Dissolve Coffee Granules: In a medium bowl, dissolve the coffee granules into the hot water. When dissolved, stir in the buttermilk. Set aside.
  3. Cream Butter & Sugar: In the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix the butter and sugar together on medium speed for 5 minutes until light and fluffy.
  4. Add Eggs: Add in the eggs one at a time, mixing until combined and scraping the sides of the bowl as necessary. Add in the vanilla, salt, baking powder, and cocoa powder and mix until combined and smooth.
  5. Combine Buttermilk Mixture & Flour: Turn the mixer to low and add in the flour and the buttermilk mixture in alternating additions, beginning and ending with the flour. Mix until just combined, scraping the sides of the bowl to ensure the mixture is evenly combined.
  6. Bake: Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 60 – 70 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
  7. Let Cool: Allow the cake to cool in the pan for 20 minutes, and then loosen the cake from the sides of the pan using a butter knife. Invert the cake onto a wire rack or lake plate to cool completely.
  8. Garnish: Once cooled, dust your cake with powdered sugar if desired & serve!
Chocolate Pound Cake Batter vs Finished Cake

How to know when your pound cake is done baking:

When your pound cake is done baking, the surface of the cake will appear firm. The best way to tell if it’s done is by inserting a toothpick into the center of the cake between the outer and inner edge of the bundt pan.

If the toothpick is covered in wet batter, let the cake continue baking. When you notice a few small crumbs come out with the toothpick, your pound cake is perfect! Be careful not to overbake it or it won’t be moist and tender.

Tips for the Best Chocolate Pound Cake

  • Don’t Omit the Coffee: Coffee plays an important role in this recipe – it intensifies how chocolaty the cake will be! If you don’t have instant coffee granules, just use 1/4 cup of hot coffee instead. (Reduce the buttermilk by 1/4 cup to keep the amount of liquid in this recipe the same.)
  • Scrape the Mixing Bowl As Needed: To ensure your ingredients combine correctly, scrape the sides of your mixing bowl whenever necessary.
  • Save Some Leftovers: Believe it or not, this pound cake tastes even better the day after you make it. Save a few servings and see for yourself!
A Moist Slice of the Best Chocolate Pound Cake

Serving Suggestions

  • Top with Chocolate Ganache: Make your pound cake even more heavenly by topping it with my Pourable Chocolate Ganache!
  • Serve with Ice Cream: Serve your chocolate pound cake with a scoop of creamy vanilla ice cream for the ultimate summer dessert.
  • Frosting: Try using my Creamy Chocolate Frosting recipe!
  • Add Chocolate Chips: If you want your cake to be even chocolatier, go ahead and add some chocolate chips into the batter.
  • Serve with Fruit: I love serving this cake with some fresh strawberries or raspberries!

How to Store Homemade Pound Cake

Store leftover pound cake in an airtight container or resealable bag at room temperature. It will stay fresh for about three days. If you want to store it for longer, transfer it to the fridge after day 3 and enjoy it within a week.

Looking Foe More Pound Cake Recipes? Try These:

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A Slice of Chocolate Pound Cake on a Plate

Chocolate Pound Cake

5 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars 2 Stars 1 Star 4.7 from 26 reviews
  • Author: Shelly
  • Prep Time: 15 minutes
  • Cook Time: 1 hour
  • Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes
  • Yield: 12 1x
  • Category: Dessert
  • Method: Oven
  • Cuisine: American

Description

This decadent Chocolate Pound Cake is rich, moist, and melt-in-your-mouth delicious! It’s the best homemade cake recipe for chocolate lovers.


Ingredients

Scale
  • 2 teaspoons instant coffee granules
  • 1/4 cup hot water
  • 1 cup buttermilk
  • 1 1/2 cups butter, room temperature
  • 2 1/2 cups granulated sugar
  • 5 large eggs
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
  • 1 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 2 cups all purpose flour
  • Optional – powdered sugar to dust or chocolate ganache

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 325°F. Generously coat a 10 – 12 cup bundt pan with baking spray. Set aside.
  2. In a medium bowl, dissolve the coffee granules into the hot water. When dissolved, stir in the buttermilk. Set aside.
  3. In the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix the butter and sugar together on medium speed for 5 minutes until light and fluffy.
  4. Add in the eggs one at a time, mixing until combined, scraping the sides of the bowl as necessary. Add in the vanilla, salt, baking powder, and cocoa powder and mix until combined and smooth.
  5. Turn mixer to low and add in the flour and buttermilk mixture in alternating additions, beginning and ending with the flour. Mix until just combined, scraping the sides of the bowl to ensure mixture is evenly combined.
  6. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 60 – 70 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
  7. Allow the cake to cool in the pan for 20 minutes, and then loosen the cake from the sides of the pan using a butter knife. Invert the cake onto a wire rack or lake plate to cool completely.
  8. Once cooled, dust with powdered sugar or pour chocolate ganache on top!

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89 comments on “Chocolate Pound Cake”

  1. Etta Astrachan

    My cake came out so buttery and caramel. After 70 minutes of baking, I was sad to see that it really did not rise and didn’t look done. After 80 minutes of baking, it still had not risen. The wooden toothpick came out clean, and the temperature in the center was 208 degrees, so I decided it was done. The cake, after 15 minutes of cooling, came out of my buttered and floured pan came out purfectly—it looked beautiful. However, an hour later when I sliced into it, it looked like it was not done. But my husband and I ate a piece anyway. The chocolate flavor was hardly discernible. I put it in the fridge overnight and, the next day, there were drops of yellow (butter) on the plate around the edges. So I wondered what I could have done wrong. Then I realized that this cake, with 1 1/2 cups of butter in it, has more in it than any other pound cake (of recipes that I have) has. I’m wondering if the 1 1/2 cups of butter is a mistake in the recipe. Most of my pound cakes has 1/2 to 1 cup of butter to about 2 1/2 to 3 cups of flour, and it seems like this cake would have come out better had I used less butter.

    Please let me know your thoughts.
    Thank you.

  2. The cake does get smaller as it cools down in the pan, and while I think the take is really good, not too sweet and not too bitter, my mother says it tastes more like coffee than chocolate. I followed the recipe exactly, so maybe I went wrong somewhere in it, but I hope once it finishes cooling it’ll taste even better.






  3. The flavor of this cake is 5 stars but I made this cake twice and both of my cakes fell. Im thinking of Thring one more time with a little more flour.






    1. This cake is suppose to fall when cooling. The first time I baked it, came out of oven nicely. Let it cool in pan for about 10 minutes, walked back in kitchen looked at the pan and thought where did my cake go. It had fallen and was so moist and good and the crumb was fabulous. Read on another site that it’s suppose to fall

  4. Hello. I have been looking for a moist chocolate pound cake recipe for a while. Stumbled upon your page, and your version looks amazingly moist. Do you have this recipe in metric measurements? (Want to be precise, because there seem to be differences in conversion, from website to website). Thank you.

  5. I thought this cake was delicious! The coffee definitely intensified the chocolate, and, unlike some other reviewers, I didn’t find it overly sweet. I didn’t top with powdered sugar or ganache.






  6. Cake came out of the oven and was beautiful but by the time it sat in the pan cooling and was taken out of the pan and put on the cooling rack it had fallen to about half the height leaving a very dense (brownie texture) and heavy cake. Tasted good.

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