chocolate
Heating chocolate or cocoa with water before using in a recipe (say, hot cocoa), makes the chocolate flavor more intense. Or so I'm told. I think I'm happy with chocolate in just about any way it comes. But, here's why:
Unsweetened chocolate contains cocoa solids and cocoa butter, while cocoa powder contains mostly solids. We found that a combination of melted unsweetened chocolate and cocoa powder produced a cake with the best chocolate flavor. But eh way we combined them proved key to our recipe's success.
Some recipes add the cocoa powder with the flour and other dry ingredients, but we found that this produced a cake with fairly weak chocolate flavor. After much trial and error, we discovered that cooking a mixture of melted unsweetened chocolate, cocoa powder, hot water, and sugar - what many older cookbooks call a chocolate "pudding" - improved the cake's flavor considerably.
At least one aspect of this phenomenon we had seen before. While developing other chocolate dessert recipes, we've found that adding hot water to cocoa solids before incorporating them into the recipe causes a "blooming" effect, enhancing the chocolate flavor in the final dish. here, too, when the unsweetened chocolate and cocoa powder were combined with hot water, they formed an emulsion - tiny droplets of cocoa solids and cocoa butter dispersed in water. The result? A noticeably more chocolaty cake.
When we took the additional step of adding 1/2 c of sugar to the mix, however, the flavor enhancement was even more dramatic. What was going on? Research revealed that sugar's strong affinity for water was key. As soon as we dissolved the sugar in the pudding mixture, the sugar molecules bonded tightly with the water molecules, leaving the flavorful cocoa solids free to dissolve in the cocoa butter (the fat) - a better medium than water for conveying chocolate flavor. (Chocolate flavor molecules are more soluble in fat than in water.) Skip the pudding step and you'll have a cake that's diminished in chocolate flavor.
from Cook's Illustrated March&April 2006
Unsweetened chocolate contains cocoa solids and cocoa butter, while cocoa powder contains mostly solids. We found that a combination of melted unsweetened chocolate and cocoa powder produced a cake with the best chocolate flavor. But eh way we combined them proved key to our recipe's success.
Some recipes add the cocoa powder with the flour and other dry ingredients, but we found that this produced a cake with fairly weak chocolate flavor. After much trial and error, we discovered that cooking a mixture of melted unsweetened chocolate, cocoa powder, hot water, and sugar - what many older cookbooks call a chocolate "pudding" - improved the cake's flavor considerably.
At least one aspect of this phenomenon we had seen before. While developing other chocolate dessert recipes, we've found that adding hot water to cocoa solids before incorporating them into the recipe causes a "blooming" effect, enhancing the chocolate flavor in the final dish. here, too, when the unsweetened chocolate and cocoa powder were combined with hot water, they formed an emulsion - tiny droplets of cocoa solids and cocoa butter dispersed in water. The result? A noticeably more chocolaty cake.
When we took the additional step of adding 1/2 c of sugar to the mix, however, the flavor enhancement was even more dramatic. What was going on? Research revealed that sugar's strong affinity for water was key. As soon as we dissolved the sugar in the pudding mixture, the sugar molecules bonded tightly with the water molecules, leaving the flavorful cocoa solids free to dissolve in the cocoa butter (the fat) - a better medium than water for conveying chocolate flavor. (Chocolate flavor molecules are more soluble in fat than in water.) Skip the pudding step and you'll have a cake that's diminished in chocolate flavor.
from Cook's Illustrated March&April 2006