Fresh Mint Cake with Dark Chocolate Mint Frosting

Use up the abundant mint harvest in this easy to make and oh-so-delicious mint cake recipe.

This is a simple cake full of fresh mint in both the cake and chocolate mint frosting – making it ideal for the mint lover in your life.

Mint is one of the tastiest and most versatile herbs from the home garden. It can also get a little on the invasive side meaning finding good recipes to use it up is paramount.

2021 Update – There were a number of reviews about this cake recipe, several folks saying it was wonderful, other folks saying they had trouble with it – that it came out like a scone instead of a cake. I remade and updated the recipe just slightly to hopefully rid everyone of any issues.

Tricks to Baking with Fresh Mint

Fresh mint seems to lose flavor in baked goods or is easily overpowered by strongly flavored ingredients. These truths, however; can be overcome. Working with fresh mint in baked goods can be a rewarding and delicious pursuit.

The trick to getting the mint flavor heavily embedded into this dessert is two-fold:

1. Beating the mint with the butter and sugar in the cake batter. This muddling of the fresh herb helps release all those yummy volatile oils and intense flavor into the fat and sugar which will carry into the entire cake.
2. Infusing the mint into the milk in the frosting makes a strong mint tea that shines through even the strong black cocoa flavor.

Don’t skimp on the beating or the infusing steps. These two steps are truly the keys to an amazing fresh mint cake that will delight and surprise everyone.

For the cake, do chop the mint finely. Use a food processor to make it small if you desire – just make sure to chop not puree!

The mint stays in the cake, so aim for small specks of fresh herb throughout the cake rather than large leaves that might not be so enjoyable on the tongue in a cake.

Frosting Choices

A dark chocolate mint frosting was an obvious choice for this cake. 

I’ve tested this recipe using a black coca and it is quite dark, as you can see. That black color in frosting isn’t always the most desirable. It is a very dark and wonderful, flavor if the color isn’t bothersome.

The triple cocoa blend from King Arthur is quite lovely here because it is such a balance between the various cocoa powders and does provide a quite lovely color.

Substitute any cocoa powder you have in the pantry. The overall flavor will be less dark and the color less intense but it will still be chocolate mint.

Chocolate is, of course, a great choice for mint. However, choices abound:

• A plain chocolate honey frosting would be incredible.
• Berries and mint are a great combination making this Berry Cream Cheese Frosting a great choice.
• One can never go wrong with a honey & cream cheese frosting.

If you want some other ideas, be sure to check out my favorite mint dessert recipes.

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