Chocolate Dessert Recipes & Snacks for Every Diet
If you're looking for reliable, chef-developed chocolate recipes, you've come to the right place! Macarons, cake, fudgey brownies, and even gluten-free ditties (that will fool your gluten-eating friends!).
If you prefer a low-carb, ketogenic or heating diet like the GAPS protocol, you will find scrumptious, unprocessed recipes. Enjoy... and be careful, death by chocolate is always one bake away!
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Baking with Chocolate
For the most part, baking with chocolate - either using cocoa powder or solid chocolate - is pretty straightforward. As long as you measure correctly, you pretty much can't go wrong. But since you're here, I'd love to share my professional tips for getting more chocolate into your life in the best ways possible.
How to Melt
Melting chocolate is perhaps its most temperamental process. Whether you're melting with other ingredients or alone for chocolate bark, low heat is best.
Measuring Tips
As a culinary student and private chef, my inexpensive kitchen scale is often the workhorse of my tools. Since baking is often a do-si-do of science and technique, I include both volume and weight measurements in most of my recipes. If you don't own a scale and have no interest in one, try to always measure your cocoa powder in a measuring cup meant for dry ingredients.
Natural vs Dutch-process Cocoa Powder
One of the most asked about questions when it comes to baking with chocolate!
The "Dutch" Process
Simply explained, the raw chocolate that becomes dutch-process cocoa powder is treated with an alkalizing chemical, potassium carbonate. Since cocoa beans are naturally acidic, this neutralizes their acidic nature. In the 1800s, a Dutch inventor developed this process to allow the powder to dissolve more easily in liquid. And also to give it a darker color.
Chef's Tips
I personally don't like Dutch-process cocoa. I find it to be well, processed. Potassium carbonate is an irritant, and used as a flame retardant and fertilizer. I personally don't want any chemicals like that near my food. Most importantly, the process also removes much of the flavor compounds we chocoholics love. Not edible times. I stock unsweetened cocoa powder in my home and professional pantry.
Occasionally, desserts will demand the cocoa powder play it neutral acid-wise in a recipe. Of course, then, you want to adhere to the recipe. But as with all of life, moderation is the key to longevity. With chocolate, too.
