Why Was The Frosting On My Devil's Food Cake Bitter?

Our answer

Nigella's Devil's Food Cake (from KITCHEN) is a moist chocolate sponge with a rich chocolate ganache-style icing. The icing is made from a combination of dark brown sugar, butter, water and dark (bittersweet) chocolate. Bitter flavours are usually associated with burning, but it is difficult to burn the ingredients for the icing as they are not cooked for long enough, unless the saucepan with the sugar, butter and water was left to boil for a very long time and almost boiled dry.

We suspect that the bitterness may have come from the chocolate used. There are now many dark chocolates available with very high cocoa content. Nigella prefers a 70% cocoa content, which gives intensity without bitterness. However, once you go above this level the bitterness of the chocolate increases and a chocolate with 80% cocoa solids or more will taste very bitter. It may also be that you prefer the taste of a chocolate with slightly lower cocoa solids, in which case we suggest maybe trying a chocolate with around 60% cocoa solids instead.