Most Singapore chocolate cakes are sweet first and chocolatey second. Ours is built the other way around — and dark chocolate is the reason why.
When people ask if our cake is a dark chocolate cake, the answer is yes. But it's worth being specific about what that means, because there's a real difference between a cake that contains dark chocolate and a cake that's genuinely built on it.
Most chocolate cakes aren't really dark chocolate cakes
A lot of cakes described as chocolate cakes in Singapore use a moderate-percentage chocolate — something in the 40% to 55% range — which sits closer to milk chocolate in character than to dark. The result is a cake that's sweet, mild, and familiar. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's a different thing from a cake where dark chocolate is doing the actual work.
To make a dark chocolate cake in any meaningful sense, you need dark chocolate throughout the recipe, not just as a garnish or a ganache drizzle over a lighter sponge. The sponge, the fudge, the whole thing needs to be built around it.
That's what ours is.
What we use and why it matters
Our sponge and our fudge are both made with Van Houten Professional 65% dark, a professional-grade couverture from the Barry Callebaut group. 65% sits in the range where dark chocolate opens up — you get genuine cocoa depth and a slight bittersweet edge, without tipping into the kind of aggressive bitterness you get above 75%.
What that does to a cake: the sweetness pulls back, and you start to taste what the cocoa bean actually offers. There's a richness that lingers in a way that lighter chocolate doesn't quite achieve. The finish is different — deeper, less one-note.
We've written more about what chocolate percentage means technically in an earlier diary post, if that's something you're curious about. But the short version is: 65% gives us a cake that tastes unmistakably of dark chocolate, which was always the point.
Who this cake is for
If you've ever ordered a chocolate cake and felt like it was mostly just sweet — like the chocolate was background noise rather than the main event — this is probably what you were looking for.
Our cake is for people who actually like dark chocolate. Who'd rather have less sweetness and more depth. Who want a cake that can hold its own as a grown-up celebration cake, not just something designed to be inoffensive.
It's consistently what our repeat customers mention: the chocolate flavour is real, it doesn't cloy after a few bites, and you can usually manage a second slice without feeling like you've overdone it.
Who it might not suit
We'd rather be honest than oversell. If you're buying for a group where you know some people actively dislike dark chocolate, or if you want something lighter and very sweet, our cake probably isn't the right call.
Dark chocolate has a flavour profile that not everyone is familiar with, especially in celebration cake form. Most people expect a sweeter, milder chocolate. Some take to ours immediately. Others find it more intense than they expected.
If you're not sure, the best way to find out is to order and try. We think most people who enjoy dark chocolate will appreciate it. And we'd rather you know what you're getting than be surprised by it.
A note on the fudge
The other thing that makes this a dark chocolate cake rather than just a chocolate cake is that the fudge is doing real work. It's not a thin layer of frosting — it's a proper chocolate fudge that adds density and cocoa flavour, not just sweetness.
A lot of cakes use buttercream between layers, which coats the palate and pushes everything toward sweetness. Our fudge intensifies the chocolate instead of diluting it. It's one of the decisions that makes the cake taste the way it does, and it's why we've never switched.
That Chocolate Cake is available for delivery and self-collection across Singapore. Browse the full collection or place an order at the shop.