Tips and Tricks for Cooking with Chocolate

The January/February issue of Today's Diet & Nutrition features an article on cooking with chocolate. Here, Maxine Clark, author of Chocolate: Deliciously Indulgent Recipes for Chocolate Lovers, published by Ryland Peters & Small (www.rylandpeters.com), offers more tips for cooking with chocolate:

•Add a good tablespoon of boiling water to seized chocolate when it has gotten too hot. Beat it really well and it will return to its smooth, glossy, former self.

•Avoid overheating, overbeating, or overstirring chocolate when you are melting it. Hot chocolate will cook egg yolks, so cool it before combining the two. White chocolate is even more heat-sensitive than dark.

•Use cocoa nibs like chocolate chips. Stir them into a batter or cake mix or sprinkle them on top of a recipe before baking.

•Cocoa butter can be used to replace approximately half of the fat or butter in a recipe.

•Small amounts of cocoa powder can be added to intensify the chocolate flavor in a recipe. If the recipe contains flour, for every tablespoon of cocoa added, reduce the flour quantity by a similar amount. Use sifted cocoa powder to decorate biscuits and cakes.

•To become more acquainted with cooking with chocolate, first taste a piece of good dark chocolate. Allow a small piece to slowly melt on your tongue and experience the different aromas and flavors that develop in your mouth. See how complex chocolate really is. Use a dark chocolate (between 60 to 70% cocoa solids) when melting it for the first time. Break it up into very small pieces and add it to a heatproof bowl that has warmed up over a pan of water that has come to a boil. Add the chocolate and then turn off the heat. Leave the chocolate to melt in the residual heat, stirring only once or twice to encourage it to melt. Add 1 ounce of very dark chocolate to a Mexican meat chili and taste it. See how rich it becomes. Then experiment with other sauces and stews.

Evaluating Chocolate

Wine tasters call upon multiple senses to evaluate wine. Chocolate aficionados similarly rely on their eyes, noses, and even their ears before letting their taste buds help them distinguish high quality chocolate from the run-of-the-mill. Try these tips next time you taste.

•Look for a smooth, glossy surface and a dark color.

•Break the chocolate. A good chocolate breaks with a crisp snap and produces a clean, smooth edge.

•Take a deep whiff. If the chocolate aroma is strong, you can count on a strong flavor.

•Put a piece of chocolate on your tongue and observe not only the taste but the "mouth feel." It should melt quickly, and should not feel waxy, chalky, pasty, or greasy, nor should it leave an aftertaste.

•Roll it around in your mouth to appreciate the primary flavors, then bit into it to reveal the layers of flavors.