Chocolate is delicious on its own, but when combined with flour, butter and other baking ingredients, something magical happens. Who doesn’t love a decadent brownie, a rich and dark slice of cake or a perfect little cupcake?
Even though chocolate is delicious for baking, it can be a bit temperamental. Here are a few tips that will help assure your baked goods turn out perfectly!
Buy the best chocolate you can afford
Using the highest-quality chocolate you can get your hands on will assure the best flavor. When you splurge on special chocolate, make sure you don’t use too much butter, sugar or spices that will detract from the rich cocoa flavor. You want the chocolate to shine through.
A “bloom” is no big deal
Sometimes temperature changes cause a white film, called “bloom,” to appear on chocolate. This can unbalance the flavor when simply eating the chocolate, but it is no problem if you are melting chocolate for a recipe. The flavors will recombine when melted.
Know when you can substitute
Milk, dark and white chocolate are all fantastic in recipes, but you can’t always use them interchangeably. Want to make white-chocolate brownies? That should be fine if the recipe calls for milk chocolate, but it won’t work so well if it calls for dark. Substitute dark chocolate only when it will be used as chips or chunks that will remain intact. If a recipe calls for bittersweet or semisweet, but doesn’t specify cacao percentage, use chocolate with no more than 62 percent cacao. Otherwise you might end up with a dry cake.
Be extra careful when melting
The best way to melt chocolate is slowly over low heat in a double boiler. If you don’t have one, you can also use a mixing bowl put inside a sauce pan of water. The microwave also works, but be sure you are melting the chocolate slowly. Use low heat and short intervals.
Using these tips won’t assure every baking project comes out perfectly, but they will certainly help! And if you don’t feel like baking, come on by and treat yourself to one of our tasty treats.