Cocoa Brownies

Asked by TK_13. Answered on 24th August 2017

Full question

Can I use cocoa powder instead of dark chocolate for Nigella's Brownie recipe? I have good quality cocoa powder and I wish to use it for chocolate cake and brownie recipes. Also, it makes it easier for me to measure it in cups.

Brownies

By Nigella

Our answer

Nigella's Brownies recipe (from HOW TO BE A DOMESTIC GODDESS) uses good quality dark (bittersweet) chocolate to create the brownie batter. Generally Nigella prefers, if possible, to use a chocolate that is 70% cocoa solids.

Unsweetened cocoa powder is a dried form of cocoa solids. But chocoate also contains fat (usually in the form of cocoa butter), sugar and vanilla. So whilst it may be possible to use some cocoa powder in the recipe, you would also need to adjust the quantities of fat and sugar in the recipe to give the brownies the same taste and texture. Consequently we would prefer to use dark chocolate in that particular recipe although you could try the recipe for Bacon Brownies, which does use cocoa powder. Nigella has plenty of recipes that use cocoa powder and you can search recipes using the keyword "cocoa" in the "Find A Recipe" bar on Nigella.com. Some popular recipes using cocoa powder include the Chocolate Olive Oil Cake, Chocolate Guinness Cake and Chocolate Banana Muffins.