Do you find it difficult to decide was to eat? ME TOO! That’s why I made this Chocolate Pizza Cake. It’s a chocolate cake with 2 slices topped with Nutella Buttercream, 2 slices topped with Vanilla Latte Buttercream and 2 slices topped with Vanilla Buttercream.

Chocolate cake is such a classic, well loved dish. There are literally millions of chocolate cake recipes online. What makes this the best chocolate cake recipe ever?
- It’s topped with 3 flavours of Swiss Meringue Buttercream
- The texture of this cake is addictively consistently soft & moist.
- The flavour is chocolately, but not at all overwhelmingly rich.
- It looks like a Pizza!
My nifty tips to nail the best ever chocolate cake
Cocoa powder has a habit of drying out your baked goods. Therefore it is a common problem to find it challenging to make a soft moist chocolate cake.
Never fear though, my nifty tips will have you nailing this Chocolate Pizza Cake Recipe
Look for a recipe that uses oil instead of butter (like this one).
Oil is more liquid at room temperature than butter. This means it will keep the cake more moist than butter will.
The other benefit of using oil is that the cake will remain soft even when refrigerated. This is because butter hardens in the fridge, but oil does not.
Get the baking time right
Overbaking is one of the leading causes of dry cakes. Everyone’s oven is different, so to ensure your cake is adequately baked use baking times in recipes as a guide only. I recommend setting a timer to go off 10 minutes before the recipe indicates that your cake will be ready, and then manually checking how cooked it actually is. You can then adjust the time accordingly.
To test if your cake is ready, you can either:
- Do the toothpick test: Gently insert a toothpick into the centre of the cake and then remove it. If the cake is undercooked there will be runny batter on your toothpick. If your cake is cooked just right there will be a few crumbs on the toothpick. If the toothpick comes out completely clean, chances are your cake is overcooked.
- Use a probe thermometer: Insert the thermometer into the centre of the cake to measure the internal temperature. The cake is cooked when the internal temperature is 200 degrees Fahrenheit (94 degrees Celsius). Be careful to take the cake out of the oven before the internal temperature reaches 212 degrees Fahreneit (100 degrees Celsius) as this is the temperature that water evaporates. Once the water has evaporated then the cake will be dry.
Techniques to avoid unevely baked cakes
If you find your cakes are doming (aka the center of the cake is significantly higher than the sides), or that the sides of your cakes come out dry, this is likely because the outside of your cake is cooking much faster than the inside of your cake.
To fix this issue you can try:
- Reducing the oven temperature by 10 degrees, and bake the cake for longer.
- Wrap the outside of your cake tins with baking strips that have been soaked in water.
Substitutions
Swiss Meringue Buttercream Substitutions
Swiss meringue can be a little tricky to make, and you’ll also need a stand mixer. If you do not have a stand mixer, you can replace the swiss meringue buttercream with either:
- Ermine Buttercream (note you’ll need an electric hand mixer)
- White Chocolate Ganache
Flavour Substitutions
The beauty of this chocolate pizza cake is that you get to try out 3 different flavours of buttercream at once. If you do not like Nutella, Vanilla or Coffee, feel free to switch out these flavours for a different one. Do this after splitting the buttercream into 3 portions (aka during step 8 of the buttercream).
Here’s a couple of alternative flavour ideas:
- Peanut Butter (stir through 1 tablespoon of peanut butter)
- Peppermint (add 1/8 teaspoon peppermint extract)
- Caramel (stir through 1/2 tablespoon of caramel sauce)
- Milo (add 1 tablespoon of milo powder)
For more ideas, check out my blog post on 50+ Cake Flavour Ideas

Chocolate Cake Pizza Recipe
Equipment
- Electric Stand Mixer
Ingredients
Chocolate Cake
- 110 grams Flour
- 30 grams Cocoa Powder
- 175 grams Caster Sugar
- 1 teaspoon Baking Soda
- 1/2 teaspoon Baking Powder
- 1/2 teaspoon Salt
- 60 ml Vegetable Oil
- 220 ml Milk
- 1 tablespoon White Wine Vinegar
- 1 Whole Egg (room temperature)
- 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
- 1 teaspoon Instant Coffee
Swiss Meringue Buttercream
- 160 grams Pasteurized Egg White
- 280 grams Caster Sugar
- 250 grams Unsalted Butter (room temperature and cut into tablespoon sized pieces)
- 1/8 teaspoon Salt
- 1 tablespoon Nutella
- 1 tablespoon Vanilla Latte Powder
Instructions
Chocolate Pizza Cake
- Add the coffee to 1/3 cup of boiling water and stir until it dissolves, then set this aside to cool while you prepare the other ingredients.
- Add the vinegar and milk to another bowl, give it a stir then set aside.
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (180 degrees Celsius).
- Grease a 6" round baking tin, and line it with parchment paper.
- Sift the flour, cocoa, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt together in a bowl. Then use a whisk to stir it and make sure everything is evenly combined. Set this bowl aside.
- In a second bowl combine the oil, egg, vanilla extract and milk using an electric mixer on medium speed.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and use your electric mixer for about a minute to combine it all together. Then add the coffee and mix again for a few seconds until everything is all mixed in and the batter is smooth. The batter will be runny.
- Pour your batter into the prepared baking tin and bake it in the oven until just cooked through. This will take about 25-28 minutes, but check regularly (refer to my blog above for advice about how to tell if your cake is cooked just right).
- Once the cake is cooked, remove it from the oven and allow it to cool for 10 minutes in the cake tin. Then gently flip the cake tin over a plate so the cake falls out. Remove the parchment paper from the cake and gently transfer it to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Once the cake is cool cover it in plastic wrap until you plan to decorate it (this will lock in the moisture). The cake can be stored in the fridge for up to 2 days, or in the freezer for up to 3 months.If you plan to freeze the undecorated cake, wrap it in an extra layer of plastic wrap and then a layer of tin foil (this will help avoid freezer burn).
Swiss Meringue Buttercream
- Place a saucepan with about an inch of boiling water on the stove on medium heat.
- Place egg whites and sugar in the bowl of your stand mixer and place this bowl on the pot of boiling water (make sure the base of the bowl does not touch the water).
- Whisk the egg whites over the heat until the sugar dissolves.
- Remove the bowl from the heat and fix it to your stand mixer. Attach the whisk attachment to your stand mixer and mix the egg whites on medium until they become foamy.Then turn the mixer to high and beat the eggs until they reach stiff peaks and the bowl is completely cool to touch.
- Turn the mixer back down to medium and add butter gradually, 1 tablespoon sized piece at a time, allowing each piece of butter to be incorporated before adding the next.
- Once all the butter has been incorporated, add in the salt and vanilla extract. Then turn the mixer up to high and whip the buttercream until it comes together.Note, the buttercream will curdle before it becomes buttercream, if it doesn’t look right just keep whipping.
- Once Buttercream has come together, replace the whisk attachment on your mixer with the paddle attachment, and mix the buttercream on medium speed for 2 minutes to make it smooth.
- Divide the buttercream evenly into 3 bowls. In one bowl stir through the Nutella. In another bowl stir through the vanilla latte powder.
- Transfer each batch of Buttercream into its own piping bag fitted with a coupler so that you can switch out the piping tips if you want to change up the design.
Decorate
- If the top of the cake has domed, use a serrated bread knife to carefully cut off the rounded top, so that you have a flat surface. Then place your cake on the serving plater.
- Use your knife to gently score the top of your cake so that you can see 6 even slices.
- Pipe the buttercream in swirls on the cake, switching up the piping tips will add more visual interest. You will have enough buttercream to have 2 slices in each flavour.
- This cake tastes best fresh, but can be store in the fridge for up to 2 days.
Notes
- This recipe will make enough buttercream to frost the top of the cake, if you also want to fill the cake with buttercream make a double batch of buttercream.
- This cake was decorated using a Wilton 1M and Wilton 8B piping tip.