I love these posts of yours with mods to the base recipe! I made your rye espresso ones the other day and used Valrhona Dulcey with a bit of plain white chocolate and they were SO GOOD.
Kinda apropos, what is your chocolate of choice for baking? I feel like for chunks it’s a bit less important, but sometimes I struggle with my choices for melted chocolate base recipes. It’s true that it’s often a mix of chocolates that I have home (Ghirardelli 72%, some Valrhona feves etc)… maybe it’s just that my taste buds are kinda weird though.
hell ya I love dulcey! that's such a great flavor addition to the rye and espresso notes!!
I'm really big on Valrhona, it's prob one of my all time faves- but, with such an expansive line of choc it can get overwhelming to know what to use where. Because all the different cocoa percentages and amounts of sugar can affect final outcomes in a melted application (like let's say mousse) But, like you said for a chunk in a cookie? WHO CARES!
I also really enjoy guittard when baking at home, it's much easier to find than valhrona can be, and more aligned with my bank account LOL
This month a lot of the ghiradelli bars have been on sale, so naturally i'm buying that (safe to say my true answer to favorite choc is whatever is on sale)
For recipes, though I usually call out the specific chocolate I used for testing and in those cases like that's the one- if there isnt a brand it typically means you can choose whatever you like because I tested it with a variety and there wasn't tons of variation between brands.
I love how you explained subbing the cocoa powder - but what about omitting the baking powder? Should you always do that when adding cocoa powder to the recipe?
OH YEAH! In my attempt to now yap everyone's ear off, I totally forgot to mention the choice to omit the BP. In this instance, I made this decision because i wanted a dense fudgy chocolate cookie I didn't want too much rise to it. And in the least scientific terms possible, baking soda causes things to rise(spread) out while baking powder causes things to rise up. So using just baking soda lets the cookie spread out instead of puffing up too much in the middle.
different types of cocoa (natural, dutched, black wtc) react differently with different leavens though, so it is definitely something to be mindful of going forward as you start to playing around with adding cocoa to a recipe. This article from King Arthur explains it all probably a lot better than I could!
I admit I usually am one of those "jump to recipe" people but I thoroughly enjoyed reading your entire post! I would love to hear your thoughts on the different types of cocoa powder. I've played around with dutch processed as well as black cocoa and haven't liked the flavors of either one. I didn't feel they had a strong chocolate flavor. Is this just a personal taste thing or what else can I mix in to experiment with these flavors a bit more?
I love these posts of yours with mods to the base recipe! I made your rye espresso ones the other day and used Valrhona Dulcey with a bit of plain white chocolate and they were SO GOOD.
Kinda apropos, what is your chocolate of choice for baking? I feel like for chunks it’s a bit less important, but sometimes I struggle with my choices for melted chocolate base recipes. It’s true that it’s often a mix of chocolates that I have home (Ghirardelli 72%, some Valrhona feves etc)… maybe it’s just that my taste buds are kinda weird though.
hell ya I love dulcey! that's such a great flavor addition to the rye and espresso notes!!
I'm really big on Valrhona, it's prob one of my all time faves- but, with such an expansive line of choc it can get overwhelming to know what to use where. Because all the different cocoa percentages and amounts of sugar can affect final outcomes in a melted application (like let's say mousse) But, like you said for a chunk in a cookie? WHO CARES!
I also really enjoy guittard when baking at home, it's much easier to find than valhrona can be, and more aligned with my bank account LOL
This month a lot of the ghiradelli bars have been on sale, so naturally i'm buying that (safe to say my true answer to favorite choc is whatever is on sale)
For recipes, though I usually call out the specific chocolate I used for testing and in those cases like that's the one- if there isnt a brand it typically means you can choose whatever you like because I tested it with a variety and there wasn't tons of variation between brands.
I love how you explained subbing the cocoa powder - but what about omitting the baking powder? Should you always do that when adding cocoa powder to the recipe?
OH YEAH! In my attempt to now yap everyone's ear off, I totally forgot to mention the choice to omit the BP. In this instance, I made this decision because i wanted a dense fudgy chocolate cookie I didn't want too much rise to it. And in the least scientific terms possible, baking soda causes things to rise(spread) out while baking powder causes things to rise up. So using just baking soda lets the cookie spread out instead of puffing up too much in the middle.
different types of cocoa (natural, dutched, black wtc) react differently with different leavens though, so it is definitely something to be mindful of going forward as you start to playing around with adding cocoa to a recipe. This article from King Arthur explains it all probably a lot better than I could!
https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/blog/2014/01/10/the-a-b-cs-of-cocoa#:~:text=Alternatively%2C%20if%20the%20recipe%20you,process%2C%20more%20for%20its%20flavor.
Loooove it thanks ☺️🍫
I admit I usually am one of those "jump to recipe" people but I thoroughly enjoyed reading your entire post! I would love to hear your thoughts on the different types of cocoa powder. I've played around with dutch processed as well as black cocoa and haven't liked the flavors of either one. I didn't feel they had a strong chocolate flavor. Is this just a personal taste thing or what else can I mix in to experiment with these flavors a bit more?
Excited to try these! I’ve been craving a little cinnamon chocolate treat
Voraciously googling why you add milk powder to browned butter lol……Thank you for techniques. I can read those like a mystery novel.
i explained why in the last cookie recipe of the series, the brown butter pecan cookies! and as you can guess, it’s for extra flavor, no mystery here!
I assumed flavor of the browned solids but I must have missed the science and technique. I read that but must have skimmed there 🫣.