Our 1st Halloween Treat Challenger for 2018 is Rodelle Kitchen!
They sent us a free jar of their Gourmet Baking Cocoa European Dutch Processed to use in baking some Halloween themed treats this year. They do have a recipe for Halloween cupcakes on their website but I didn't have all of the required ingredients on hand so I went with a basic cupcake recipe that uses this type of cocoa. Remember, there are two ways to process cocoa and the baking requirements are different do pick your recipes carefully. No other form of compensation was received for this fair and honest testing of their product.
Open the canister I discover a wonderfully reddish cocoa as one should expect from the Dutch process. It had an intense cocoa scent but I was careful when I breathed it in. You can see in the next photo by the ingredients liste of the recipe I used for the cupcakes. As they baked, around the 18 minutes mark, the house started smelling like cocoa, too.
Finding a cupcake recipe that used only dutch cocoa and not another type of chocolate was tricky. When I coupled that with the fact that I didn't want to use yogurt (my family dislikes it and I find it can easily overpower flavors) it took research. I went with the cupcake half of the recipe on this page and adjusted ingredients a bit as you can see below.
Dutch Cocoa Cupcake Cakes (makes 18)
Ingredients:
100g margarine brought to room temperature so it is soft (1 stick)
300g sugar
90g egg whites (6 Tablespoons)
100g Rodelle European Dutch Processed Cocoa (15 Tablespoons or 1 T less than a cup)
150g whole wheat flour (slightly less than 1 cup)
5g baking powder (1.5 teaspoons)
270ml skim milk (9.4 ounces) -- use a bit more than the original recipe because I'm using whole flour and skim milk
Directions:
1. Line 18 muffin tins with paper or foil liners.
2. Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C).
3. Beat together margarine and egg whites until soft then slowly add in egg whites until full blended. I had to scrap the bowl a few times to get it all mixed well.
4. Stir together flour, baking powder, and cocoa.
5. Stir in 1/2 of the dry ingredient mixture to the sugar, margarine, and egg whites mixture.
6. Pour in the skim milk and fold in the rest of the dry mixture.
7. Fill cups 2/3 of the way full.
8. Bake for about 25 minutes then remove the tin to a cooling tray until you can turn out the liners without burning yourself.
9. Finish cooling the cupcakes until completely cool. Don't they look nice and dark in color?
At this point we tasted one cupcake to get a sense of the Rodelle Cocoa. The "we" was my hubby who oftens helps with tea and chocolate and is my general recipe taste tester. With not added flavorings, not even vanilla and a ratio of Flour to Cocoa of 3:2 this is a good test of the cocoa's chocolateness. It has a strong chocolate scent and strong chocolate flavor, not too sweet at all, no flour flavor even though I used whole wheat. That means that Rodelle's Gourmet Baking Cocoa European Dutch Processed is strong indeed! Sacrament Worthy! I haven't gotten to type that in a few months!
Then I had to decorate them but I waited until the next day to do that. I used a flavorless white frosting so I could color and flavor it as I wanted. I created two simple decorating schemes. Bloodshot eyes with a tongue sticking out on a sickly yellow face (caramel frosting) and a gummy jack o'lantern with a little black spider as a friend (marshmallow frosting).
The final result may not be high scale quality in terms of decorating but with the Rodelle Gourmet Baking Cocoa European Dutch Processed the cupcakes tastes excellent! They earn our Sacrament Status!
Open the canister I discover a wonderfully reddish cocoa as one should expect from the Dutch process. It had an intense cocoa scent but I was careful when I breathed it in. You can see in the next photo by the ingredients liste of the recipe I used for the cupcakes. As they baked, around the 18 minutes mark, the house started smelling like cocoa, too.
Finding a cupcake recipe that used only dutch cocoa and not another type of chocolate was tricky. When I coupled that with the fact that I didn't want to use yogurt (my family dislikes it and I find it can easily overpower flavors) it took research. I went with the cupcake half of the recipe on this page and adjusted ingredients a bit as you can see below.
Dutch Cocoa Cupcake Cakes (makes 18)
100g margarine brought to room temperature so it is soft (1 stick)
300g sugar
90g egg whites (6 Tablespoons)
100g Rodelle European Dutch Processed Cocoa (15 Tablespoons or 1 T less than a cup)
150g whole wheat flour (slightly less than 1 cup)
5g baking powder (1.5 teaspoons)
270ml skim milk (9.4 ounces) -- use a bit more than the original recipe because I'm using whole flour and skim milk
Directions:
1. Line 18 muffin tins with paper or foil liners.
2. Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C).
3. Beat together margarine and egg whites until soft then slowly add in egg whites until full blended. I had to scrap the bowl a few times to get it all mixed well.
4. Stir together flour, baking powder, and cocoa.
5. Stir in 1/2 of the dry ingredient mixture to the sugar, margarine, and egg whites mixture.
6. Pour in the skim milk and fold in the rest of the dry mixture.
7. Fill cups 2/3 of the way full.
8. Bake for about 25 minutes then remove the tin to a cooling tray until you can turn out the liners without burning yourself.
9. Finish cooling the cupcakes until completely cool. Don't they look nice and dark in color?
Then I had to decorate them but I waited until the next day to do that. I used a flavorless white frosting so I could color and flavor it as I wanted. I created two simple decorating schemes. Bloodshot eyes with a tongue sticking out on a sickly yellow face (caramel frosting) and a gummy jack o'lantern with a little black spider as a friend (marshmallow frosting).
The final result may not be high scale quality in terms of decorating but with the Rodelle Gourmet Baking Cocoa European Dutch Processed the cupcakes tastes excellent! They earn our Sacrament Status!
Comments
Other than the Rodelle's, we've tried Equal Exchange, TCHO, Freedom Superfoods, Viva Labs cocoa powders that we've been sent but I've also used other brands. We've also used cocoa mixes to bake with as well from several other brands, too, Some are better, some worse, but I can't say that any really stands out as superior to all the others.
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