I was looking over a recipe for a cooked chocolate syrup that uses Dutch
process cocoa. The only apparent reason that Dutch process is used over
natural cocoa (for this particular recipe) is taste--smoothing out the
acidity of the cocoa.

I only have regular cocoa around; would adding a little baking soda be
effective in accomplishing the same end? In what ratio?

I was debating whether to simply use the regular stuff as-is.

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at Fri, 09 Jul 2004 17:38:32 GMT in <heimdall-8B4E16.13383909072004@news4-
ge1.srv.hcvlny.cv.net>, lid (Scott) wrote :

>I was looking over a recipe for a cooked chocolate syrup that uses Dutch
>process cocoa. The only apparent reason that Dutch process is used over
>natural cocoa (for this particular recipe) is taste--smoothing out the
>acidity of the cocoa.
>
>I only have regular cocoa around; would adding a little baking soda be
>effective in accomplishing the same end? In what ratio?

Adding baking soda would only be necessary if the recipe were a baking one,
that relied on chemical reactions for its result, e.g. certain kinds of
cakes. If you're just using it to make a syrup, you probably don't even
need the baking soda - just use the natural-process cocoa as is. The
flavour will probably be a little more intense, and certainly somewhat
sharper. However, it would be useful to see the recipe to make sure there
weren't any hidden gotchas.


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Alex Rast

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