Elegant Chocolate and Vanilla Recipes
Our love affair with chocolate and vanilla keeps growing as we discover new ways to enjoy them in recipes like these from Midwest chefs and our Test Kitchen.
Chocolate tips
Chocolate ratios: Wondering which chocolate to buy? Some semisweet/bittersweet chocolate bars come labeled with percentages revealing the proportion of cacao (pure chocolate) to sugar. On average, semisweet/bittersweet contains 50-55 percent cacao to sugar.
Chocolate with a higher cacao percentage looks darker and tastes less sweet and more chocolatey. Keep in mind that ratios above 70 percent can give different results in recipes. These chocolates may cause a cake to be dry and, predictably, less sweet. Experiment to see what you like best. For a good reference on cooking with these chocolates, we recommend Alice Medrich's Bittersweet.
Powders: Dutch-process is regular cocoa treated with alkali to neutralize its acid and give it a mellow taste. Use either unsweetened cocoa powder or Dutch-process cocoa in recipes calling for unsweetened cocoa powder.
Comments (0)