This week’s practical assignment taught us about the “modified
sponge method” for mixing cookie dough. The sponge method involves whipping egg
whites in a Bain Marie (a pot over simmering water) to make a meringue. The modified sponge method uses either the yolks of the egg or the whole egg instead
of just the whites.
To learn this technique we made decadent Double Chocolate
Cookies. They’re double chocolate
because they have melted "dark chocolate" and cocoa powder added. My cookies were actually triple chocolate because I
also added dark chocolate chips. (I don't consider the white chocolate chips I added to be "real" chocolate, but that's another story...)
Compared to learning Baker’s Math, which we also worked on
this week (don't ask), this was pretty straight forward and easy. The only challenge, really, was making sure the
cookies were actually done baking when taken out of the oven. The cookies are already dark from all of the
chocolate so it was very difficult to tell when they’re done – you can’t
judge by color. Instead, you have to
rely on how soft they appear to be in the middle and how crisp they are around the edges. Some of mine, I fear, should have baked
another minute or so.
I used a new ingredient with these cookies. Well, new to me. It’s BLACK cocoa powder! And it really is black – it looks like
someone crushed a charcoal briquette! It’s
a “super Dutched" form of chocolate cocoa powder.
What is Dutched chocolate?
Chocolate is acidic and bitter which is why some people don't like Hershey's "Special Dark" chocolate bars. Its acidity is also why you don’t need to add buttermilk, sour milk, or another acid
when you bake with baking soda if you’re using chocolate in the recipe.
Dutched chocolate is regular chocolate that
is treated with an “alkalizing agent to modify its color and give it a milder
taste compared to natural cocoa.” Because it’s been made more alkaline, it's less bitter and, if you
use Dutched process cocoa in your recipe along with baking soda, you will need to add something acidic to activate the baking soda.
The process
for making chocolate more alkaline was developed in the early 19th century in the Netherlands by a Dutch
chocolate maker named Coenraad Johannes van Houten. The process was named for his nationality –
Dutch.
The black cocoa powder I used is a great ingredient for
recipes that call for cocoa powder – provided you want the end product to be
very dark in color. Homemade Oreo
cookies, for example, call for this powder; otherwise, you wouldn’t end up with
a black cookie. It’s great for chocolate
cakes and glazes, especially if you make part of the cake or frosting using
normal cocoa resulting in a nice contrast of light and dark. To use black cocoa, you simply swap out about 25%
of the regular cocoa for the black. You
can use more, but it may adversely affect the flavor.
I used just the black
cocoa in the cookie recipe and didn’t mix it with regular cocoa because I was only using a little
bit – the majority of the chocolate flavor was coming from melted chocolate, so
I knew it wouldn’t be adversely affected.
In fact, it helped enrich and deepen the overall chocolate flavor. And it did help make the cookies turn black
in color (or nearly black), which was the effect I was looking for.
I’m looking forward to trying it with other recipes –
especially for chocolate cake or a mirror glaze!
The pursuit of pastry involves pursuing new ingredients and experimenting with them to see how they can be used to enhance and even reinvent the product you are making.If interested, you can find the black cocoa at King Arthur Flour, but there are other companies that offer it as well.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_process_chocolate
 |
| Double Chocolate Cookies |
 |
| On the left is regular cocoa. On the right is the black cocoa. |
Comments
Post a Comment