Hi I’m new to this site. I started taking the Wilton cake decorating classes last month and really love doing it. I started looking for really good cake recipes which is how I found “The Cake Bible” and this site. I decided that if I’m going to make a cake look beautiful outside it should be equally as beautifully made. Thank you for your wonderful recipes.

I have been making the Down Home Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake and I just love it and so does everyone else. I was wondering though if I could use Ghirardelli premium baking chocolate instead of Hershey’s cocoa? Would I need to make any other changes to the recipe? I was also wondering how many cups of batter should go in a 6” x2” round and a 4"x 2” round?

Thanks,
Terry

twadleigh - 19 February 2013 12:15 PM

I was wondering though if I could use Ghirardelli premium baking chocolate instead of Hershey’s cocoa?

They aren’t perfect substitutes for each other, so you can’t substitute one for the other without making other changes. I presume that the baking chocolate is unsweetened, so the main difference is that it includes cocoa butter in addition to the chocolate; cocoa has almost no cocoa butter at all, so gram for gram, it’s a much more intense chocolate experience.

At a rough guess, baking chocolate is probably 50% chocolate and 50% cocoa butter, so if you dropped the cocoa, you’d need twice the amount of baking chocolate to compensate, and you’d need to reduce the other fat content of the cake.  Also, I presume that Rose has you bloom the cocoa in boiling water. This enhances the chocolate flavor, but I don’t know how well that works with baking chocolate.

I typically convert recipes using baking chocolate to ones using cocoa, due to the overall convenience of it.

Oh we’ll, I guess I’m off to the store. Thank you for the help.

re: batter for the smaller size pans, you can always pour water into a pan to see the capacity.  The batter amount should be 1/2 to 2/3 full.  There is also a chart on p.455 (TCB) showing the capacity of many common pans.

re: the chocolate mayo cake, this is the only chocolate cake in the Cake Bible that I haven’t made, and this is the second time this week someone has recommended it.  Must put it on my to-bake list!

I also like the Mayo cake and I never use the cocoa. It just isn’t chocolaty enough for me. I use grated bittersweet and I just guess at the amount. I have been very happy with the results. I think you will find the recipe to be forgiving.