The Black Cocoa Experiment

Week: 11
Ingredient: Black Cocoa
From: King Arthur Flour
Recipe: Dark Chocolate Shortbread

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

I always get excited about holidays that give an excuse to eat something special. Therefore, I find it a little strange that I have never celebrated Saint Patrick’s Day with an Irish feast. Mmm ... colcannon and soda bread and ... Guinness? OK. I admit I do not know much about Irish cuisine. Unfortunately Saint Patrick’s Day crept up on me this year, and there was no time to plan an Irish meal. So, I decided to settle for something (at least semi-) Celtic.

The first element of my (at least semi-) Celtic adventure was a shortbread mold decorated with Celtic knots. It arrived last week in a very exciting package from King Arthur Flour. I did not order it with Saint Patrick’s Day in mind, so the Celtic design was a happy coincidence. And what do you do with a shortbread mold but make shortbread? Shortbread is typically regarded as Scottish, and Scotland is a Celtic nation, so that was a happy coincidence as well. But how could I make shortbread adventurous?

The not-so-Celtic part of my adventure also arrived in the very exciting package from King Arthur Flour: black cocoa. According to its package, black cocoa “will make the darkest chocolate cake or cookies you’ve ever seen.” I like dark chocolate, so dark chocolate shortbread seemed like a good idea. And to make a good idea even better, I decided to turn this into an experiment. I would make two batches of shortbread: one with regular cocoa and one with black cocoa. That way I could really see what a difference the black cocoa makes.

See for yourself:

I was pretty astonished at the difference between the two shortbreads. When I looked at the regular cocoa shortbread on its own, it looked very chocolaty, but placed beside the black cocoa shortbread, it looked kind of weak. In addition to the difference in appearance, the shortbreads differed in texture. The black cocoa produced a soft shortbread while the regular cocoa shortbread was crumblier. What was most astonishing, however, was the taste. You would expect something that dark to be intensely chocolaty, but that was not the case. In fact, I would not even say the black cocoa had a stronger flavor; it was just different. The regular cocoa shortbread tasted like chocolate, and the black cocoa shortbread tasted like the cookie part of an Oreo. It pains me a little to compare my homemade confection to a mass-produced cookie, but that is the best way I can think to describe it. You can decide for yourself if an Oreo-like flavor is a good thing or a bad thing.

Conclusion: I really like the color the black cocoa lends, but I am not thrilled with its flavor. Because the black cocoa package warns that using it alone “will produce a very strong-flavored baked good,” I (more or less) heeded its advice and made my black cocoa shortbread with a 2:1 ratio of black cocoa to regular cocoa. In the future when I want the dark color of black cocoa, I will probably try a ratio more like 1:1 or 1:2.

Bonus: If I ever decide to embark on an adventure to unlock the secrets of the Oreo, I have a really good lead on what gives them that black color.