Ingredient

Cocoa powder

There are two kinds of cocoa powder and they are not interchangeable, because one is acidic and one is not — and in a recipe that relies on bicarbonate of soda, that difference decides whether the thing rises.

Natural and Dutch-processed

Natural cocoa is simply cocoa beans with most of the cocoa butter pressed out and the remainder ground. It is acidic, pale reddish-brown, and sharply, fruitily chocolatey.

Dutch-processed cocoa — also sold as alkalised — has been treated with an alkali to neutralise that acidity. It is darker, sometimes almost black, smoother and mellower, and it dissolves more readily.

The flavour difference is real but modest. The chemical difference is not. Natural cocoa's acidity reacts with bicarbonate of soda to produce the gas that makes a cake rise. Dutch cocoa has no acid to offer, so a recipe using it needs baking powder — which contains its own acid — instead.

Which one your recipe wants

If the recipe does not say, the raising agent tells you.

Bicarbonate of soda only

Natural cocoa. The bicarbonate needs the cocoa's acid to work.

Baking powder only

Dutch-processed cocoa, or either. The powder brings its own acid.

Both

Usually written for natural cocoa, with the powder providing extra lift. Either will more or less work.

Neither — brownies, ganache, hot chocolate, ice cream

Either. Choose on flavour and colour: Dutch for a dark, smooth result, natural for a sharper, fruitier one.

A very dark cake — "black" cocoa

Heavily Dutched. Intense colour, less chocolate flavour. Usually blended with ordinary cocoa rather than used alone.

Getting more out of it

• Bloom it. Whisk the cocoa into a hot liquid — coffee, milk, melted butter — before it joins the rest of the recipe. Heat and liquid release far more flavour than dry cocoa stirred into flour, and this single step transforms a chocolate cake.
• Sift it. Cocoa clumps aggressively and dry clumps in a batter do not disperse.
• Add salt. Cocoa is bitter and salt suppresses bitterness, so a proper pinch makes it taste more chocolatey rather than saltier.
• Add coffee. A spoonful deepens chocolate flavour without reading as coffee.
• Do not confuse it with drinking chocolate, which is mostly sugar with a little cocoa in it and cannot substitute in a recipe.

Cocoa, cacao and the labels

"Cacao powder" is generally sold as a less-processed, unroasted or low-temperature version, and it is often more expensive and more bitter. In baking it behaves like natural cocoa — acidic, and it works with bicarbonate.

Cocoa powder is very low in fat compared with a chocolate bar, which is why substituting between them needs an adjustment: roughly three tablespoons of cocoa plus a tablespoon of fat stands in for an ounce of unsweetened chocolate, and any sugar in the chocolate has to be accounted for too. It is usually easier to find a recipe written for what you have than to convert.

Common questions