Chocolate Cake Is 3 Times As Rich With These 2 Simple Toppings

If you're like most people who really love chocolate cake, you want it to really double down on the chocolate. The best chocolate cakes go all in on deep chocolate flavor with minimal distraction. The only other big goal is a moist, tender crumb that melts in your mouth. Usually, chocolate cake leans on chocolate buttercream to keep it from getting too one-note. It brings a lighter chocolate flavor that contrasts the cake. If you're a true chocolate cake lover, however, you should try going the other way. Amp up the intensity even more with two simple toppings: chocolate ganache and chocolate curls.

Chocolate ganache is basically richness incarnate. A simple mixture of chocolate, heavy cream, and maybe a little sugar, it becomes a velvety sauce that melts over cake for a beautiful, sleek finish. Use it in place of frosting, and it can completely transform any chocolate cake recipe. While frosting also has a good amount of fat, it also has tons of added sugar, which can distract from the flavor. Thick ganache is much more decadent and rich from the cream, with a deep, focused chocolate flavor  — especially if you use dark chocolate. Rather than adding a light contrast, it adds a thicker one, and it melts into the already moist cake as you eat. 

You can easily adjust the texture of chocolate ganache to your own taste, increasing or decreasing the amount of chocolate to cream if you want an even heavier chocolate taste. Chocolate curls, on the other hand, are as simple as they sound — but they can add a lot of texture and complexity to your cake. You can make perfect ribbons with a vegetable peeler and basically any block of chocolate. 

When choosing the chocolate bar for your curls, get a style different from your cake to add complexity. For a more cocoa-forward flavor, pick your favorite dark chocolate bar or chips, and vice versa. Chocolate curls are great for bringing textural contrast to a cake, because they add a little more bite. But like ganache, they can also add richer notes because they're pure, undiluted chocolate. The curls melt in your mouth as you eat, adding extra chocolatey goodness. It melds with the ganache and the cake to form a chocolate flavor greater than the sum of its parts.

If you want to go the extra mile with both toppings, borrow a trick and add espresso powder to your chocolate cake recipe. Coffee and chocolate have similar flavor compounds, which is why it's often added to chocolate cake to deepen the flavor. Use just a little, and it won't taste like coffee, but your chocolate will somehow taste even more chocolatey. In this case, you can add a quarter teaspoon directly to the chocolate ganache when you make it, and sprinkle some over the chocolate curls. If you are trying to make the richest chocolate cake, you might as well go all the way.