4 helpful tips when baking with Chocolate and Cocoa Powder

Posted byAmariPosted inBaking 101, Facts, Tips and UpdatesTags:,

For our “Tips on Tuesday” feature today, we’re sharing 4 tips to use while baking with cooking chocolate and/ or cocoa powder.

These are great tips for your chocolate recipes.

CHOCOLATE

1. Melting Chocolate

Chocolate scorches easily, so it should be melted carefully and gently. It should be melted over hot water using a double-boiler

Double boiler
Double boiler

or make-shift one with 2 cooking pans or sufurias.

Home-made Double boiler (bakingbites.com)

Take a medium pan and boil hot water in it, switch off the heat and set aside. Place another pan on top of the one with hot water, make sure it doesn’t enter inside the pan with water. The top pan’s base should be slightly larger than the top of the bottom pan, the top pan should not come in contact with the hot water.
Place the chopped, grated or small blocks of cooking chocolate into the top pan and give it some time to start melting. Slowly stir with a wooden spoon until the chocolate is melted; it’s now ready for use.

Melted chocolate (courtesy:tipnut.com)

2. Storing Chocolate

Chocolate is delicate and absorbs moisture and odors easily. Store it in a cool, dry place away from light and heat. The ideal storage temperature for chocolate is 12 to 20 degrees Celsius.

baking chocolate
Baking Chocolate 

COCOA POWDER

3. Add more liquid

When baking with cocoa powder; if you make a chocolate cake from a White or Vanilla cake recipe base, you should increase the liquid in the recipe. This is because the cocoa powder is high in fiber and starch, it absorbs moisture.
Cocoa powder (courtesy:davidlebovitz.com)

4. Substituting Cocoa powder in place of baking chocolate

If you want to bake using a chocolate recipe that calls for cooking or baking chocolate but have none in your kitchen; you can substitute chocolate with cocoa powder. Here is how:
Combine: 3T Cocoa powder
               1T Butter/Margarine or Vegetable Oil
This makes an equivalent of 28 – 30 gms (1 oz.) of baking chocolate.
I hope these few tips will help you with your chocolate cake, cupcake and cookie recipes.
If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to comment below, thank you ^_^

To learn how to bake chocolate cake and other delicious baked products. Visit our Baking Classes page, email us: amaribreads@gmail.com or Call/Text: 0701796688

Published by Amari

Baking with Amari offers learning experiences in form of short baking and cake decorating classes. We have a baking workshop at Discounts Arcade, Shop no. 51 on Ngong road (Adams Arcade area next to The Green House), in Nairobi that offers baking & cake decoration learning experiences for those who want to learn what bakers and cake decorators do in a practical/hands on Bakery kitchen. We have both online and practical/physical classes. We also offer baking business start-up training and group mentorship as well via our Baking for Profit Program. We also sell locally tested baking recipe books (soft copy & printed books).

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