Soaking Cake In Cooled Hot Chocolate Is The Ultimate Flavor Hack

We all love a dangerously delicious chocolate cake recipe. However, the problem with a lot of chocolate cake recipes is that the ingredients themselves cause the cake to dry out either in the oven or shortly after removal from the oven. No one likes a dry, crusty chocolate cake. Bleh.

As you might expect, one of the top culprits in a dry chocolate cake is flour, specifically all-purpose flour. Unlike other types of flour, all-purpose flour doesn't retain moisture particularly well, so whatever moisture you've added will bake off or otherwise evaporate. By the same token, you should be sure to follow the measurements given in the recipe so your dry-to-wet ratios aren't skewed.

Just as flour can dry out your chocolate cake, so can cocoa powder. Low-fat cocoa powder, as it turns out, has high starch content and results in stiff baked goods. How are you supposed to make a luscious chocolate cake if the cocoa powder is the very thing drying it all out? 

If you're sick and tired of your chocolate cakes coming out dry and crumbly, you aren't alone. Sure, you can do your research into high-fat, low-starch Dutch-process cocoa powders, and making that change will fix your problem. Or, you can add a step that will also dramatically boost the chocolatey flavor of your cake. We know which option we're choosing.

As baker Adeline Vining divulged to The Guardian, an easy way to return moisture to a chocolate cake is by coating it with cooled hot chocolate. Not only does this trick relieve some of the dryness, but it also adds to the chocolate flavor. What's more, you could experiment with different flavors of hot chocolate.

Of course, this hack extends beyond just cooled hot chocolate. Other potential cake "soaks" might include coffee, juice, or even booze — just be sure that whatever you use is cooled before you use it on your cake. After this step is complete, feel free to frost away!