20-Ingredient vs. 10-Ingredient vs. 2-Ingredient Chocolate Cake • Tasty

Hi , my name is Alvin .

I like to bake at home .

So I thought it'd be fun to make chocolate cake .

One with 20 ingredients , one with 10 ingredients and one with two ingredients .

I'm curious to see if more ingredients equals better .

And I'm honestly just excited to make and eat a lot of cake .

So let's get started .

First up , I'm gonna make the 20 ingredient chocolate cake to start with the dry mix .

I'm combining all purpose flour sugar , Dutch processed cocoa powder , which is pretty important , baking soda , baking powder and a little bit of salt because I think salt and desserts is really great and this will just get sifted until all the big lumps get shown and then you kind of press them back in until all the big lumps become small dust and everybody's happy .

So this is the dry mixture for the cake .

This next part is kind of cool , some stout dark beer , some vanilla extract and some espresso powder .

Honestly , I think this is pretty awesome because this will add a lot of flavors to me .

This is almost like a flavor enhancement potion that really is gonna make the cake .

Taste good .

All right .

So now the frosting I'm gonna use two sticks of unsalted butter at this point .

I really forgot that I was supposed to beat the butter with the sugar and not have it in the dry mix .

But I think it's fine .

After that , I'm going to put in some eggs just one by one so that it doesn't clump up too quickly .

I like to scrape down the sides in between just because I like to keep things tidy .

And after that , this is probably gonna freak a lot of people out .

We're gonna use mayonnaise .

So I initially thought this was kind of weird .

But if you really think about it , mayo is eggs , oil salt .

It's essentially what we already have in the cake .

Just adding more of the same alternating between wet and dry ingredients as you mix , helps the mixture become more even and prevents a lot of huge clumps .

After a while , the mixture will look all soft and nice and will become really , really delicious smelling and looking cake batter .

I mean , yeah , this oh yeah , look at that .

That looks good .

They bring down the sides until the rest is done .

But this is a very Oh yeah , that's what I'm talking about .

Um Probably my favorite part is that dark chocolate chunks go directly into the batter .

So if you like chocolate , I think you're gonna really like this cake .

I'm dividing this batter into 38 inch cake pans , which I've put parch mint sort of greased all around .

Don't forget to taste your batter as well .

Even though my mom says I shouldn't do it .

But I am an adult now and I do what I want and I'm making these in a preheated oven at 325 F until they're done .

While the cakes bake , I'm gonna make the frosting .

I'm gonna start with three sticks of butter , beating it up like it owes me money .

And then I'm going to add in some vanilla .

Just throw some flavor as well as some more Dutch processed cocoa powder .

I think it really makes a difference if the cocoa powder is Dutch processed cocoa powder is a lot darker and it just tastes so much more like really , really good chocolate , some salt and some powdered sugar .

Now , this has a lot of powdered sugar .

So I'm making sure to add it a little bit by a little bit .

And when it gets a little dry , I add milk while I'm doing this .

You kind of spilled all over my kitchen .

So we're gonna skip past that part and go wow .

Look , chocolate frosting done .

Ok .

And the cakes are done .

So I'm gonna pull them out of the oven and I'm letting them cool on a wire rack and just until they're able to be handled and after they are , I flip them out onto a rack upside down , flipping the cake upside down while it's warm , helps flatten any of the top .

So you don't actually have to trim the cake once the cakes are completely cool .

I'm going to attempt to decorate it .

So cake decorating is one of my biggest weaknesses .

I'm terrible at it .

So I'm going to attempt to try to make this cake look good .

Uh If you're a pastry chef or a cake decorator or professional out there , that's watching .

I am sorry .

Uh I don't know how to do this correctly .

Probably could have done a lot better here , but I think , you know , it's , it's , it's all right .

Uh You need , please don't yell at me in the comments that would really hurt my feelings , but hey , not bad for our first attempt at this cake decoration .

And the recipe calls to add some nice fresh fruit over the top half cut strawberries and some raspberries can cover up a lot of mistakes .

So nice .

Do wanna cut a slice and eat it because I'm very hungry at this point .

And I also just wanna see how I did .

All right , a little moment of truth to see what the cross section looks like .

And All right , not bad .

This is the 20 ingredient chocolate cake .

I'm gonna be tasting all of these cakes at the end .

So stay tuned .

All right .

Next up , I'm going to make a 10 ingredient chocolate cake .

This one is a take on a box cake mix .

So I'm starting out with two packets of boxed cake mix .

Um some eggs , some oil and instead of water , I use cold brew because I think this really adds a lot of flavor .

Coffee and chocolate go together really well .

And it's my way of making a cake that doesn't taste like cakes mix .

And this is the kind of cake I would make for my friends and hope that they don't notice that it was boxed .

But if they see this video , uh sorry guys , you're cool .

But I was lazy .

Same thing batter , separate them cake pans and I'm baking these also at 3 25 for about 30 to 35 minutes until they are ready .

My experience with cake mix is that it always seems to dome no matter what I do after baking .

So I'm gonna need a trim it later .

I'm making a chocolate cream cheese frosting .

So starting off with cream cheese butter bean them together like they stole my lunch .

And after that , I'm going to add again some cocoa powder .

We usually when I make this , I don't usually have Dutch processed cocoa powder on hand .

So I just use normal cocoa powder which is fine and same thing as the other frostings , adding powdered sugar slowly bit by bit until the frosting is nice .

I really just watch on look how smooth everything is and how silky the texture is .

I mean , it doesn't really get much better than this and to trim the cake , these did dome a little bit .

So I'm going to do my best and trim it as much as I can .

It's probably a better way to do this .

I don't really know how .

But yeah , ok .

And to decorate , going to try to do this thing , I mean , it might have improved slightly from the first time around , but I will say this cake spinner thing or whatever , that things makes it a lot easier because then , you know , kind of fixes all the mistakes for me .

So after this is as smooth as I personally can handle to decorate , I actually like to put chocolate chips on the outside .

I think it's a nice decoration because again , it helps me hide the fact that I'm not good at cake decorating and I think it looks pretty and it tastes good .

And chances are if you're making this for someone who likes chocolate , they're probably gonna like chocolate chips too .

So kind of a win win situation , all the chips are pretty much almost on .

I like to use some parchment and kind of rub against the side so that it really shapes up the cake into a nice round shape .

And after that , when you peel the parchment away , you kind of get a more aligned cake feel if that's a word .

I don't know if that's a word .

But yeah , that's the cake .

I think it all tastes good .

Oh that was a good cut .

Alvin .

That was a nice one .

Like a second slice .

Oh Jesus .

That is a huge slice .

Oh , this looks nice .

Look that look at that cross section .

This is the 10 ingredient chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting and an upgraded box mix .

Nice and last but not least , I'm gonna make a two ingredient chocolate cake for this one .

I'm starting off with a lot of chocolate bars just breaking them into chunks because the goal is to put them in the microwave and heat them up until you can sort of melt them and become this really beautiful silky chocolate puddle that you wanna jump in and some egg yolks total of eight egg yolks that I've separated from the whites .

And this part , you know , might seem weird because everything's getting all chunky and comfy , but that's part of the recipe and with egg whites that I've separated and kept out , I'm going to beat them until I get them to about soft peaks .

Not too hard until they're just looking like clouds .

And yes , these , these do look like clouds .

Nice to first just gonna sacrifice a little bit to really whip into this chocolate egg yolk mixture just so that it becomes smooth and slowly but surely whip in the rest of the egg whites until they're folded in and they're nice and smooth and it looks like that and looks looks good , looks good .

And I'm gonna put them into a smaller cake pan .

Usually a spring form pan just because this cake isn't meant to be a triple tier cake .

And this one goes into an oven again at around 325 for about 45 minutes .

It's pretty dense .

It rises a lot because the egg whites have a lot of air in them .

But this will sink a little bit after it's cooled .

So , you know , let this hang out here until it's nice and ready .

Ok .

So this one is cooled and trimming the top because it is kind of chunky and lumpy .

This cake is definitely a little bit more dense than the other two because I think it's literally just chocolate and eggs and now we're gonna make the glaze .

This is just some melted chocolate again , microwave and heat it until it's nice and smooth .

Oh , yeah , that's , that's smooth .

And you guys are probably gonna get anatomy because technically this is a third ingredient .

I'm adding a little bit of water because I'm making a which you can do with water and chocolate and just even though they don't mix , if you keep stirring , it'll become smooth and glossy and silky .

Just like that .

Technically , water is a third ingredient .

But guys , it's , it's water .

Please help me out here .

I'm a little bit more relieved because I don't have to decorate it as nicely as the other cakes and just try to cover this whole cake and make that .

Oh yeah , that's a nice good one kind of digging this world .

I don't know why I came up with it on the spot and it's fun to do .

I will say it is very , very fun to do .

But yeah , I probably could have definitely made that look a little bit better .

But again , this is a two ingredient , chocolate cake .

I just think it's really awesome that this entire chocolate cake is just 32 ingredients , you know , eggs , chocolate and water .

This is a two ingredient or three ingredient chocolate cake , depending on how mad you are at what I did .

So time to taste , starting with the 20 ingredient chocolate cake .

This is really good .

It's super chocolatey , all the other stuff we put in it like the beer and the mayo .

It really just kind of adds up to something really , really great .

Eating the 10 ingredient one , the cake itself is still really good .

The frosting is different because we use cream cheese and the chocolate chips add a really nice touch .

The two ingredient cake is probably the most interesting out of all of them .

It's got a more dense cakey texture .

The taste itself is really good .

It's basically like 90% chocolate .

So it's really chocolatey .

So does the ingredient amount matter .

I think it definitely does .

I think what's really important is the quality of those ingredients .

The 20 ingredient chocolate cake has a lot of things in it .

The Dutch processed cocoa powder , the beer , the mayo all really help enhance the quality of the cake itself as well as the frosting .

Even though we didn't use Dutch processed cocoa powder and the 10 ingredient chocolate cake , adding those chocolate chips at the end , increase the chocolate ness of the whole cake , which is a great idea .

And the two ingredient chocolate cake punches far above its weight class .

It's has 10 times less the ingredients of the 20 Rey chocolate cake .

But compared flavor wise , it's really , really good even though it's not that same soft cake and frosting texture , no matter how many ingredients you wanna make your cake with .

If you use really good ingredients and choose ingredients that add a lot of value , I think you're gonna end up with the great cake .

I'll see you guys next time .

Happy Baking .