my favorite recipe is also the double chocolate cake from epicurious mentioned above. I use high quality chocolate (callebaut or scharfenberger). but always use plain old Hershey's extra dark cocoa that is widely available. The cake is moist and has a rich chocolate taste but is not dense. It is really wonderful. I once used valrhona dutch process cocoa in a recipe and thought it had a chemical taste. I threw out the whole $30 bag of it. Since then I have stuck to Hersheys and been very happy with it. I use the extra dark for almost everything. BTW my close second favorite recipe for chocolate cake is the deluxe devil's food cake on the side of the Softasilk flour box. I have made it countless times and it is great. Compared to the double chocolate cake, it is slightly less intense in chocolate flavor and slightly more dense in crumb, but very close in my family taste tests. It uses butter instead of oil, no coffee or chocolate, just the cocoa. (The double chocolate cake domes a bit more, and is a bit crustier on the top, and needs to be leveled). Sometimes it is handy to have an alternate recipe, in case of ingredient shortages! HTH
