Prepare your baking pans. I used three 8” pans. 🍰. Grease the bottoms and sides of the pans with butter, shortening, or cooking spray. 🍰. Lightly flour only the bottoms. 🍰. Place a round sheet of parchment paper (cut to size) on the bottom of each pan. 🍰. Spray the parchment paper with cooking spray, then dust the paper and sides of the pans with cocoa powder.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (177°C)

Sift together the flour, cocoa, salt, baking powder, and baking soda.

Brew your coffee so that it has time to cool a little. Instead of brewing it, I used two packets of instant coffee in 1.5 cups of boiling water.

Using a hand mixer, mix the eggs and sugar until pale and fluffy (~2 to 3 minutes)

Drizzle in the oil, then mix again for about 2 minutes. Mix in the vanilla for 30 seconds or so.

Add the milk to the coffee to bring it down to a slightly warm temperature. Then, add the coffee/milk mixture to the liquid ingredients, and (you guessed it!) mix again!

Gently mix in the dry ingredients until blended. The batter will be quite thin, and there will still be some small lumps, but that is okay. Don’t overmix!

Pour the batter into the prepared pans. Each should be a little over half full.

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Allow to cool in the pans for about 10 minutes or so. Once they are cool enough to handle, remove the cakes from the pan and allow to cool completely.

At this point, the individual cake layers can be wrapped tightly and stored at room temperature overnight until frosting them the next day.

Frost and decorate as desired. I used a chocolate buttercream between the layers as well as on the outside of the cake. I pressed chopped dark chocolate onto the bottom sides of the cake and did some simple piping on the top. I didn’t go too crazy with the amount of frosting, since it seems that most people tend to scrape a portion of it off anyway. 🤷‍♀️. One alternative to frosting between the layers is jam. In the past, I’ve used strawberry jam. 🍓

The frosted cake can be stored, covered, at room temperature for up to a day, but it’s best to refrigerate it after that.

Notes: Others have reported great success in using baking pans of other sizes: 9x13”, 9” round baking pans, Bundt pans, and even cupcakes. The cooking time will have to be adjusted depending on which size pan you use.

Notes: For any of the alternate cake sizes noted above, divide the recipe amounts by 1.5. For example, 3 cups divided by 1.5 = 2 cups flour.