chocolate cake -- cocoa v. real choc
I made 3 choc cakes with real choc. all were excellent. i just made a choc cake w cocoa to compare. it was lauded as one of the best choc cakes and yet it was immediately inferior and i didn't bother to use frosting which did use real choc. the cake used buttermilk but no butter. i'm wondering if it would have been better using butter instead of oil. but unless someone has made a choc cake w cocoa instead of real choc (and presumably w butter), my conclusion is to only use real choc for the body of a choc cake.
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4 Comments
This is my experience, too. I find chocolate cakes made with cocoa lack the rich full chocolate taste.
I don't think the oil vs butter choice has much to say here. Cakes made with oil taste fine if their other ingredients give you a good, complex flavor (gingerbread, honey cake, various fruit cakes or muffins).