High Altitude Friendly Chocolate Cake – A rich, moist chocolate cake that won’t sink at high altitudes and still bakes beautifully at low altitudes.
When I first moved to Utah nearly 10 years ago, the chocolate cake recipe I loved would sink as it baked. After several failed attempts, I knew it was time to do some research and rework the recipe.
Reasons Cakes Sink at High Altitude
Baking at high altitudes can cause significant issues in baked goods, particularly cakes, due to the lower air pressure. At higher elevations, the reduced pressure allows liquids to evaporate more quickly, which can dry out the batter. Additionally, the leavening agents like baking powder or baking soda can act more aggressively, causing cakes to rise too quickly and then collapse before they have a chance to set properly.
This rapid rise can lead to dense, sunken cakes with an uneven texture. The faster evaporation also means that sugar may become more concentrated, affecting the cake’s structure and sweetness. To combat these challenges, adjustments in ingredient ratios, oven temperatures, and baking times are often necessary when baking at altitude.
Key Ingredients for Success
Before diving into the recipe, it’s important to note some of the key ingredients that make this cake stand out:
- Cocoa Powder: Courtney uses high-quality unsweetened cocoa powder, which is essential for achieving that rich chocolate flavor. She recommends using a Dutch-processed cocoa for a smoother, more intense taste.
- Buttermilk: This not only adds moisture but also brings a slight tang to balance the sweetness of the cake. Buttermilk helps create a tender crumb, making the cake incredibly soft.
- Hot Water (or Coffee): Adding hot water or brewed coffee intensifies the chocolate flavor and helps dissolve the cocoa, resulting in a cake that’s extra rich.
- Oil: Instead of butter, this recipe uses oil, which keeps the cake moist for longer periods without drying out—perfect for a cake you want to bake in advance or serve over a couple of days.
How to Make High Altitude Friendly Chocolate Cake
Step 1: Prep Your Oven and Pans
Preheat your oven to 325°F (163°C) and grease and line three 8-inch round cake pans with parchment paper. This step is crucial for ensuring the cakes release easily and bake evenly.
Step 2: Sift the Dry Ingredients
In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Sifting ensures there are no lumps in your batter, which is especially important with cocoa powder.
Step 3: Mix the Wet Ingredients
In a large bowl, combine the sugar, eggs, buttermilk, oil, and vanilla extract. Mix on medium speed until everything is fully combined and smooth.
Step 4: Combine the Dry and Wet Ingredients
With your mixer on low, gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Once combined, slowly pour in the hot water (or coffee) while continuing to mix. The batter will be thin, but don’t worry—that’s exactly what you want for a light, moist cake.
Step 5: Divide and Bake
Evenly divide the batter between the prepared pans and bake for 30-35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Be careful not to overbake, as that can dry out your cake.
Step 6: Cool and Frost
Once baked, let the cakes cool in the pans for 10 minutes before turning them out onto wire racks to cool completely. Frost only when the cakes are fully cooled.
Tips for Success
- Don’t Rush the Cooling Process: Ensure your cakes are completely cool before frosting. Even a slightly warm cake can cause the buttercream to melt.
- Use High-Quality Cocoa: The quality of the cocoa powder significantly impacts the flavor, so opt for a good Dutch-processed cocoa to get the best results. I love Extra Brute Cacao Barry Cocoa Powder.
- Use room temperature ingredients: Using room temperature ingredients will help your cakes rise better because the dry ingredients are better able to absorb the wet ingredients.
My High Altitude Friendly Chocolate Cake is easy to make, yields impressive results, and delivers the kind of rich, chocolatey flavor you’ll want to return to again and again. Whether it’s for a special occasion or just because you’re in the mood for cake, this recipe will become a go-to in your baking repertoire.
Give it a try and enjoy the satisfaction of making a homemade cake that looks and tastes just as good—if not better—than anything you’d find in a bakery! Happy baking!
Buttercream Recipe: https://cakebycourtney.com/chocolate-buttercream/
High Altitude Friendly Chocolate Cake
Ingredients
- 2 cups (240 g) all purpose flour
- 1 3/4 cups (350 g) granulated sugar
- 3/4 cups (88.5 g) good quality dark cocoa powder
- 2 teaspoons (8 g) baking soda
- 3/4 teaspoon (3 g) baking powder
- 1 teaspoon (6 g) kosher salt
- 1 cup (240 g) buttermilk, room temperature
- 1/2 cup (109 g) vegetable oil
- 3 eggs, room temperature
- 1 teaspoon (4.2 g) pure vanilla extract
- 1 cup (236 g) hot water
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Spray three 8-inch round cake pans with nonstick spray. (You can also use four 6-inch pans). Line the bottom of each pan with parchment paper, then spray the pans again.
- Combine the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment and mix on low speed until combined.
- In another bowl, combine the buttermilk, oil, eggs, water and vanilla.
- With the mixer on low speed, slowly add the wet ingredients to the dry, scraping the bottom of the bowl with a rubber spatula.
- Pour the batter into the prepared pans (about 15 to 16 ounces in each) and bake for 22 to 25 minutes.
- Cool in the pans for 10 minutes, then turn them out onto a cooling rack and cool completely.
- Wrap in plastic wrap and chill until ready to use. You’re still going to want to level your cake layers to ensure a completely even surface for frosting and stacking.
I just made this cake (after many high altitude chocolate cake fails) and it is the best! It’s so soft and tender and doesn’t fall like all others! I’m in Denver and have always struggled with chocolate cake. This will now be my go-to! Thank you
I’m so glad it worked well for you in Denver. I worked on it a ton to make it just right here in Utah and hoped it would be good in higher altitude too.
So excited to make this cake! How many people does this feed?
You’ll get about 18 slices out of it.
Help! I bake at 6,700 feet and my cake fell! I did make some substitutions. Not having a carton of milk in the fridge, I used 1/2 C. non-fat dry milk with 1/2T. vinegar and 1/2 C. yogurt as a substitute for buttermilk. I also used an egg product out of a carton. Baked my two 9″ pans containing very stiff batter for 17 minutes. Did any of my substitutions contribute to this failure…
Hi. I do believe your substitutions played a role in your cake having problems. I always use fresh eggs, fresh buttermilk (or half milk and half plain greek yogurt as the only sub for buttermilk), and fresh levening agents like baking soda and baking powder (don’t use them if they are over 6 months old). The batter shouldn’t be stiff in this cake. It’s actually a runny batter compared to other cakes.
I just made this cake and it completely fell, all three layers. I followed the recipe exactly. I live at over 5,000 feet elevation, would the s be a factor?
Darn, I’m so sorry to hear that. No, your elevation shouldn’t be an issue because I’m at a similar elevation – there’s a few reasons it may have sank: your baking powder and baking soda are expired (they are good for 6 months from the day you buy them), your internal oven temperature is off from what the screen is actually telling you (use an internal oven thermometer to check), you’re over mixing the batter (once you add the wet ingredients, you only want to mix on low until the ingredients are incorporated).
Is this Course kosher salt???
Yes
I love you for this! I made this cake (with razzleberry jam in the layers and the chocolate frosting from your post “classic yellow cake”) for my son’s birthday party and it turned out just PERFECT! Like @Marley, I have had many fails (I live in Utah) and this was so soft and tender, perfect for a crowd of über picky little taste testers. I am going to print this recipe and treasure it forever and forever. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
I’m so glad it was a hit!
Hi Courtney,
So I was just baking my layers for the dark chocolate and salted caramel cake for a baby shower this weekend, and I followed the recipe perfectly. However, my layers barely rose in the oven, and although they came out spongy and moist, they’re only about an inch thick. I live in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, so I’m not at a high altitude (we are only 230 feet above sea level), but when I came across your High Altitude chocolate cake recipe while trying to troubleshoot, I noticed it’s the exact recipe as for the Dark chocolate and salted caramel cake. So while I was just beginning to think I may have over-mixed my batter, I’m now wondering if it didn’t rise because this recipe has been adapted for high- altitudes. Any advice? how can I alter the recipe to rise more- less flour and eggs and more baking powder? if so, what adjustments for that recipe would you suggest? thanks in advance!
Courtney Fennell
Hi Courtney! So an inch for this cake isn’t too far off. The high-altitude adjustments actually won’t make a difference to you at sea level. I make my cakes in Los Angeles all the time. But, a couple things to be mindful of to make sure you get the best rise out of your cakes: don’t over mix your batter (which you seem to already know), use fresh baking powder and baking soda (nothing over 6 months old), use room temperature ingredients, and make sure your oven temp is correct inside with an internal oven thermometer.
Thanks for your reply! The only thing I hadn’t double-checked was my oven temp with an internal thermometer as I don’t own one. Everything else was bang on. And the thickness turned out to be a non-issue as, instead, I made another batch to total a 6-layer tall cake. (which you saw on Instagram). I will definitely be using this recipe again, especially now that I know I didn’t screw it up! Thank you for sharing your recipes and your knowledge! I will be investing in an oven thermometer 🙂
At first I thought my batter was way too liquid so I was afraid my cake would fail but as soon as I put it in the oven.. woah! It just started to rise like crazy. I do regret not dividing the batter into many containers, I put it all in a “big” one but is rised too much til it started to fall down.
I do agree this is the best chocolate cake recipe! Thank you Courtney for sharing your recipes!
Have you tried making this batter as cupcakes? Just wondering if it would work…
Yes I have and they don’t work as cupcakes for some reason.
I tried making this recipe and the cakes will not bake well. They have been in the oven over the amount specified and they are all liquid in the center. 3 small loaf pans.
Can anyone suggest what went wrong?
I hand mixed them. I’m at 5,500 feet also.
All my pumpkin loaf cakes (2) are fine and also the lemon cakes (4) are fine.
This baffles me.
That’s interesting… I’m also at high altitude and I reworked this recipe over and over to make sure it was high altitude friendly for everyone. My two thoughts are: one, could your internal oven temp be off from what your screen tells you? Or second, when you say
loaf pans” do you mean bread pans? That’s going to bake much differently than a cake pan.
I live at 5,252 feet altitude.
I made the chocolate cake from the Oreo cake version which had slightly more flour in it than this recipe and it came out perfectly. The only other thing I did, besides the tips Courtney pointed out, was WEIGH my flour in grams as I’ve been putting way too much flour in my cakes. A book on high altitude baking I have has also suggested raising your oven temperature 15-25 degrees F (the author claims doing so helps “set” the batter before the cells formed by the leavening gases expand too much).
This doesn’t apply to any of Courtney’s recipe because she bakes at high altitude, but the author of that book says that adding an extra egg to your sea-level cake recipes may help prevent a “too-rich” cake from falling. If you are like me, it will take trial and error for you to figure out what works best in your altitude.
I wanted to also add that the cake recipe for the “Cookies and Cream” cake not only uses a bit more flour than this version, but also LESS SUGAR.
Can I use normal cocoa rather than high quality dark cocoa?
Yes, it will be a lighter chocolate flavor
Do you have any other recipes that are adjustable for high altitude? I’ve discovered my baking is very different above sea level in Colorado!
Actually, all my recipes are great at high altitude 🙂
I live in Santa Fe, 7500 Feet. They totally collapsed. Crying. The other ones I’ve made and adjust for altitude are domed. Help! How do I get a flat cake at 7500 feet?
Oh no! Try taking out about 1/4 cup sugar in this cake to adjust for your altitude. For the domed cakes, make sure your ingredients are room temperature and add a few tablespoons of sugar.
Was the bake time a typo?? Is it really 18 min. Mine aren’t even close to being done
Thanks, B
No, not a typo. Have you checked your oven temperature with an oven thermometer lately? If your cakes are taking that much longer to bake then I wonder if your oven is running cool.
Thank you, I’ll check that. Also my cakes caved. Would using sea salt contribute to that? Or maybe my oven cooking cool? I also live at a higher altitude then Utah. Any suggestions?
I was wondering the same thing. When I make this recipe, it always takes 30+ minutes to bake. I do use an oven thermometer. The recipe, as written, divides the batter into three 8″ cake pans. I always use two. Maybe that’s the difference?
I made this for my daughter’s 2 year birthday because she loves loves loves chocolate and we live in Aurora, Colorado so at high altitude and this cake was AMAZING. It was so moist and mouth watering. I had so many compliments on it – most of my cakes in the past have been dense and dry but this was hands down the best cake I’ve ever made so thank you for sharing!! It was literally demolished within minutes – everyone wanted a piece!
Yay! Love hearing that!
I made this recipe today in three 8-inch pans and they fell slightly — not as bad as some of my past chocolate cake failures, but I was disappointed. I have not leveled them yet so I don’t know how much height they’ll lose. I’m not asking for advice or feedback, just wanted to share my pain. I’m in SLC, Utah and was really hoping this was the one.
Just wanted to post an update — I was able to salvage the cake by placing pieces trimmed from leveling the cake into the slightly-sunken middle to even it out. Since it’s such a moist cake and top was sticky after being frozen that worked great. I’m not sure what I’d do differently next time though since I followed the recipe to a T. I even measured the ingredients rather than weighing them, just to be fair to the recipe. I must say, the taste was delicious!
Thank you! I live in Denver and have been dying to try Ina’s chocolate cake recipe, but was afraid I’d mess up the altitude adjustments and wind up with a sunken mess. I made this cake last week, following the recipe exactly as written (other than having to bake it a little longer), and my cake was perfect! It was rich and moist and delicious! I’m so happy I found this recipe. I will be making it again and again. Thank you for doing the work to get the altitude adjustments just right.
You’re a lifesaver. I just moved to Denver and was about to make Sweetapolitas chocolate cake recipe and then realized I’m now at 5,000 feet! This is so great that you love her cake recipe too. Thank you!!!