Chocolate chocolate chip cookie dough - cocoa powder vs. melted chocolate? Help!

Cafe Society
1

I’m in the middle of making chocolate chocolate chip cookie dough and realized I goofed on the ingredients. Instead of getting unsweetened cocoa powder I got Baker’s unsweetened chocolate squares. Can I just use a half cup of melted squares instead of the half cup of cocoa powder the recipe calls for, or is there some other equivalent?

2

No, because of the fat content of the baking chocolate. You’d need to allow for the fat (reducing the other fat in the recipe), and even then the results would be iffy as usually you cream the butter and sugar together - which wouldn’t work in this case.

Substituting baking chocolate for cocoa - oChef.com discusses substituting cocoa + fat for a recipe that calls for chocolate. So you can go in that direction. I wouldn’t try switching it the other way.

3

I’m guessing this is going to be a bit late to help you out with this recipe, but Joy of Cooking says that 1 oz. of unsweetened chocolate = 3 tbsp cocoa powder + 1 tbsp butter. So, if you use the squares, you’ll also want to use less butter. Good luck!

4

ummm…I already did it. I waited as long as I could for a reply I swear. I haven’t baked yet, the dough’s in the fridge. What’s going to happen? Did I make icing? I’ll have cookies I can eat only in the vicinity of a defibrillator? It’ll just be disgusting all around? The little bit of dough I had tasted good, anyway. Maybe I should start over.

Thanks for the information.

5

Bake a batch, see what happens, and then you can either add some more flour if they spread too much, pitch them and start over if the results are just tragic, or just carry on if they seem OK. It probably won’t be a disaster, but they might be on the thin side.

6

My sister once used twice as much butter as she was supposed to and was about to toss them. My bro and I got to them first. Dayum, they were good! They spread out kinda like lace, all chewy and yummy. I’d go for it!

Plan B would be to use the above equivalents, add more of the flour etc. from the original ingredient but correct with less butter in the second batch, then combine all.