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This Cayenne Chocolate Cake is an extravagant combination of moist homemade cake spiked with cayenne pepper and cinnamon and layered with roasted cherries and goat cheese buttercream.
It’s topped with an easy no-churn Coffee Ice Cream, melding the flavors together in a trio of awesomeness inspired by Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream.
Jump to RecipeBirthday Cake
I was having a really hard time choosing what kind of birthday cake I wanted this year.
Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting is the birthday cake I grew up with. And I’ve done a couple of decadent chocolate cakes some years. Cake batter flavoring has been something I’ve gotten really obsessed with lately too. A funfetti cake like Molly Yeh’s or this Fourth-fetti Cake was also catching my eye (aka my stomach).
But in the end, I was being pulled too much in each direction with no way to find an acceptable and tasty compromise. And then I read this article from Life and Thyme about Jeni Britton Bauer’s crazy ability to create and combine flavors utilizing her sense of smell. And that’s when I got really excited.
What if I created a cake based on her tried and tested flavors and trio combinations? I could do something really crazy and have a better probability of it actually tasting good.
I browsed the flavors, taking into account my baking skills and personal taste and choose the Queen City Cayenne, Intelligentsia Black Cat Espresso, and Goat Cheese with Red Cherries trio for inspiration.
Cayenne Chocolate Cake with Goat Cheese Buttercream, Roasted Cherries, and Coffee Ice Cream
This cake or I should say Dessert, is over the top but not overpowering. Each of the different components is delicious alone and yet they manage to combine together for an even better dessert experience.
And you know what the great thing is? Each part is also EXTREMELY easy to make. The only way to make this hard is to do everything in one day, try to take pictures, and go birthday shopping. Yep, that was me.
So I’ll break down the cake in the order that makes this the easiest extravagant dessert ever.
Coffee Ice Cream
I guess if you thought of the Cayenne Chocolate Cake as the meal, this Coffee Ice Cream would be the side.
It’s simply frozen whipped heavy cream + sweetened condensed milk. Soaking heavy whipping cream with finely ground coffee overnight creates the perfect coffee flavor and there is no churning required.
My dad thinks it’s the best coffee ice cream he’s ever had and it was his favorite part of the dessert.
Roasted Cherries
Combine fresh or frozen cherries with some sugar and cornstarch in a baking dish and roast in the oven until the liquid has thickened but is still a syrup, about 45 to 60 minutes. The cherries are placed in-between the two cake layers but the sauce, which is like syrup, is spread on the top layer of the cakes to keep them moist.
Both the ice cream and roasted cherries can be made up to a week in advanced. If you can trust yourself not to eat it all before you make the cake.
Cayenne Chocolate Cake
I’ve been in love with Hershey’s “Perfectly Chocolate Cake” for ages. But it was a secret love. I felt like people would look down on me for admitting to liking a recipe on the back of a box.
But apparently, I’m not alone. There’s a lot of love out there for the recipe and when you start looking around at chocolate cake recipes, it’s there. And it’s here too. I’ve added 1.5 teaspoons of cayenne and a ½ teaspoon of cinnamon for the spice. But I’ve also tried to troubleshoot some of the common problems.
One of the main issues with the cake is that it often sinks, which mine did. Part of the problem was my baking powder. I hardly ever use it and mine expired about a year ago.
I think I still would have gotten a sunken cake though. After doing a thorough cake autopsy, I decided that it sank from having too much leavener, not too little. Here’s what I learned from my failure:
- Sift all the dry ingredients and whisk them vigorously to make sure everything is distributed equally.
- Have the eggs and milk at room temperature.
- Wisk the wet ingredients together separately before adding them to the dry.
- Make sure the boiling water is ready to add before combining the wet and the dry ingredients.
When I made these changes, the second round went much better and I got perfect cakes.
Goat Cheese Buttercream
Butter, goat cheese, and cream cheese are whipped until fluffy and then powdered sugar is added. I say to add 2 to 4 cups. Two cups get you a very weak buttercream but the goat cheese flavor was, in my opinion, perfect. Four cups get you a more sturdy frosting with less goat cheese flavor.
Cake Assembly
I’m a newbie to dessert decoration. Blogging has kind of forced my hand. I watched these YouTube videos to get me through cake assembly and decoration:
- Red, White and Blue Fourth of July Confetti Cake, Institute of Culinary Education. Fun, fast, and I learned how to turn my microwave plate and wheel into a cake turntable.
- How to Fill, Crumb-Coat and Ice Cakes with Buttercream LIKE A PRO!, How To Cake It. What is crumb-coat? Huh?! I finally know what crumb coat is now.
- Watercolor Cake, Abby Larson. A frosting technique that even decorating dunces like me can pull off (kind of).
I didn’t follow all the advice. My cakes came out really even and flat. I was also in a hurry so I didn’t trim the tops and sides of my cake. Overall I’m happy with the results, especially as it was my first true cake decorating attempt.
A Celebration of Plenty
I’ve been sharing the creation process of this Cayenne Chocolate Cake on Instagram in my stories and some people asked if I was going to share it on the blog. And I said yes but I would probably save it for something special. Well, I totally forgot that I have a pretty HUGE anniversary on May 20th.
A year ago I had my colon removed. It’s been a really intense year for me. But today, I’m all about celebrating plenty. I’ve had plenty of hurt and pain but now I can experience plenty of joy and extravagance.
This Cayenne Chocolate Cake may be intense and ridiculous but I’ve had an intense and ridiculous year. So live it up, because you never know when your life will change.
Cayenne Chocolate Cake with Goat Cheese Buttercream, Roasted Cherries, and Coffee Ice Cream
Ingredients
Coffee Ice Cream
- 2/3 cup finely ground coffee
- 2 + 1 cups heavy whipping cream, separated
- 1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
- 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
Roasted Cherries
- 4 cups frozen or fresh cherries I used frozen dark cherries
- 1 and 1/3 cups sugar
- 4 teaspoons cornstarch
Cayenne Chocolate Cake
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 and 3/4 cups all purpose flour
- 3/4 cup unsweetened cacao powder
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 and 1/2 teaspoons cayenne pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 and 1/4 teaspoon Morton Coarse Kosher Salt 1 teaspoon if you’re using regular table salt
- 2 eggs, at room temperature
- 1 cup whole milk, at room temperature
- 1/2 cup canola oil
- 1/2 cup boiling water
Goat Cheese Buttercream
- 1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1/2 cup goat cheese, at room temperature (or 4 ounces)
- 1/4 cup cream cheese, at room temperature (or 2 ounces)
- 2 to 4 cups powdered sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon salt (or to taste)
Instructions
Coffee Ice Cream (can be made up to 5 days a head of time)
- The night before, combine 2 cups heavy whipping cream and the ground coffee in an airtight container. Stir to mix well, cover, and let it sit in the fridge overnight.
- Place a metal bread loaf pan in the freezer to chill overnight as well.
- The next day, place a fine mesh strainer with a layer of cheesecloth over a bowl. Pour the cream in and strain out the coffee. You’ll have to run a spoon in circles and squeeze the cheese cloth to try and get as much of the cream out. You should have about 1 cup, maybe a little more.
- Mix together the condensed milk and salt in a large bowl and set aside.
- In a glass or stainless steel bowl, add the coffee infused cream and 1 cup of fresh heavy whipping cream. Whip on high speed until firm peaks form.
- Add about 1 cup of the whipped cream to the sweetened condensed milk and fold with a rubber spatula until combined. Fold the rest of the whipped cream in until well blended.
- Pour into the chilled loaf pan, cover, and freeze for at least 5 hours.
Roasted Cherries (can be made up to 5 days a head of time)
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Combine the cherries, sugar, and cornstarch in 9-inch square baking dish and toss to mix.
- Roast 30 to 45 minutes until the juice has thickened and is bubbly. Stir every 15 minutes until done. Let it cool completely before storing it in the refrigerator in an airtight container.
Cayenne Chocolate Cake (can be made the day before)
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease two 9-inch round baking pans and line the bottoms with parchment paper. Dust the sides with flour.
- Measure and sift all the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl. Whisk to mix.
- Whisk the eggs, milk, and oil together in a medium bowl.
- Add the wet ingredients to the dry, whisking until just combined.
- Whisk in the boiling water.
- Pour into the prepared pans and bake for 30 to 35 minutes or until the cake starts to pull away from the edges and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
- Let the cakes cool ten minutes in the pan and then remove them and let them cool on wire racks. If you plan to frost the cake the next day, let the cakes cool completely and then wrap each layer in plastic wrap.
Goat Cheese Buttercream
- Place the butter, goat cheese, and cream cheese in a large bowl. Beat until creamy and then add the powdered sugar gradually. For a more sturdy buttercream add all 4 cups of powdered sugar. I liked the flavor best at 2 cups powdered sugar.
- Once all the powdered sugar is added, beat on medium-high speed for 4 to 5 minutes until it’s fluffy.
Cake Assembly
- If you made the cakes the night before, take them out of the refrigerator and unwrap them from the plastic wrap. Or wait until the cakes have cooled completely. Place one cake on a portable flat surface like a cardboard cake round, the bottom side of a plate, or anything else you have on hand. I used a round wooden surface.
- Place that on top of a cake turntable or use your microwave plate and wheel to make a turntable (just take the wheel off, place it on the counter, and then put the microwave plate back on top of it).
- Use a pastry brush to coat the tops of the cakes with the roasted cherry syrup.
- Place about 1 cup of frosting on top of the cake and spread it around evenly. I tried to have about a half inch of frosting. Place the other cake on top of the frosting.
- Place 1 cup of frosting on top of the cake and start spreading it out in a thin layer, using a pastry scraper and the turntable to spread the frosting around. It’s okay if crumbs get loose and it’s messy-it’s the crumb coat. You should be able to see the cake peaking through the frosting. Use more frosting if necessary.
- Put the cake in the fridge for 30 minutes to allow the crumb coat to set.
- Take the cake out again, place it on the turntable and add big dollops of frosting all around. Take a pastry scraper, hold it vertically and at a slight angle to the cake, and start turning the cake around. Keep going until excess frosting no longer coats the scraper and the cake is smooth.
- To get the water color effect, put dollops of colored frosting (I used 3 different colors) all around the cake and simply repeat the previous instruction.
- Store the cake covered at room temperature or in the fridge for 3 to 5 days.
Notes
I made this cake for Christmas to go with our Christmas Tacos – I wanted something chocolate and spicy. The cayenne was JUST the right amount to create warmth, but the kids liked it too. But more importantly, this cake was so deliciously chocolatey, moist, DELICIOUS, and the butter cream …… incredible. Cherries? Coffee? Really – this recipe is a keeper. I might frame it. (One thing – even though it’s widely available, I really am not a fan of Hershey’s cocoa – maybe because it’s not dutch? It has a weird acidic taste, to me. In any event, I used a cocoa from a candy store – Philadelphia’s Candies in Sharon, PA – that WAS dutch, and I do think it created a much more delicious chocolate flavor.)
I’m so glad you and your family enjoyed it! And I totally agree with you about the cocoa powder-I recently made this cake and used Dutch-processed cocoa powder instead and it was so much more delicious. Happy holidays and have a great New Year!
I’m hoping to try this today! The flavor combination is intriguing. Does the cake really not have flour in it? The Hershey’s version does have flour, right?
I’m so frustrated with my inability to transfer my recipes properly!!! You are absolutely correct, there is flour in the cake. I’ve corrected my mistake and everything is correct now. I’m so sorry if you attempted the cake and it came out horrible ?!
this sounds insane!! definitely wouldn’t have thought to pair all these things together, but i love drawing inspiration from other flavor combos (even if i haven’t tried them myself lol). i love coffee ice cream, and cherries and goat cheese go so well together, and chocolate doesn’t hurt, so this is sounding pretty amazing (:
Thanks, Heather! I loved this whole dessert so much for both the way it tasted but also the looks on people’s faces when they realized all the flavors work so well together, lol. I’ll have to try other flavor combos inspired by Jenni’s because this one was such a winner!
Girl, you are a force! Force in the kitchen and a powerhouse in life. Thanks for sharing everything you do in your post so we have the pleasure of getting to know you and those irresistible desserts. Goat cheese? Butter? and Cream Cheese? OMG. I am scared that summer is coming. I swear I can’t stop myself with the balance of slurping up this delicious cake or slathering it on my thighs! Ok, I guess I rather slurp. YUMMY!
Thanks, Cindy! It’s been a pleasure sharing because everyone has been so supportive and encouraging, food bloggers are awesome people! And I feel you! My sweet tooth has been crazy lately and I keep giving in to it!
Totally a celebration cake and gosh you photographed it so beautifully! I love adding cayenne to chocolate, gives such a fun spice kick at the end of the tongue.
Thanks so much Kankana! I was so worried about the pictures because I had to take them with so little light! And I could agree with you more on the cayenne/chocolate combo!