The Fruity Condiment You Need To Add To Your Next Chocolate Cake

A classic chocolate cake can stand on its own, but some cooks like to gild the lily by adding extra ingredients such as mayonnaise or sour cream for moisture or instant coffee to deepen the flavor. Others will even add vegetables like mashed potatoes (sounds weird, but tastes great) or sauerkraut (something only the brave will try). Chef Vivian Villa, however, has a suggestion that sounds quite a bit more palatable than fermented cabbage — she recommends enhancing chocolate cake with fruit jam.

Villa, who sells her own line of sauces as well as a product called UnButter, told The Takeout that apricot jam goes especially well with chocolate. "Apricot acts as the supporting flavor which helps chocolate steal the show and adds a dense chewy texture with well-balanced sweetness," she said. "Apricot is an excellent mate for chocolate, particularly in dense, dark, and gooey chocolate cakes." For a less subtle flavor enhancer, Villa also suggested different berry jams ranging from the conventional (raspberry and strawberry) to more out-of-the-jar suggestions (cranberry, haskap, and saskatoon berry). With berry jams, she said, "The slight tartness offsets the richness of the chocolate and balances the flavor."

Jam can be added to cake in several different ways. You can spread it between the layers once they've cooled or thin it out with some hot water and pour it over a cake that's just come out of the oven. (Poke a few holes in the surface to help the jam syrup sink in.) Jam can also be swirled into cake batter.

If you want to add fruity flavor to a chocolate cake without the added sugar that jam provides, there are several ways to do this. Fresh fruits like bananas and berries can be chopped small and stirred into the batter. Before you do, though, roll each piece in cocoa powder first since this will keep them from sinking to the bottom. Dried fruits are also great for baking, but they're even better if you rehydrate them by soaking them in water (or some other liquid) for 20 minutes.

Villa also suggested flavoring chocolate cake with cooked, pureed fruit, but says this ingredient "especially shines when gently swirled or layered alternately with chocolate batter into a cake pan." As she described the effect, "The ribbons of fruit provide visual interest and concentrate the flavors of the fruit that would otherwise be lost if mixed completely into the batter."

If you don't want to tinker with the cake recipe, though, there's a great way to add fruit flavor to frosting. Get some freeze-dried fruit and grind it into a powder, then stir it into a batch of buttercream. If you start with vanilla, the powdered fruit will add a colorful tint to the frosting as well as flavoring it.