Sweet Baking Chocolate

Baking chocolate, also referred to as unsweetened chocolate, is a crucial ingredient used in numerous variety of desserts. It brings in that strong, natural cocoa flavor into any dish due to its lack of sugar or additives, giving your recipe a deep and rich chocolate base. However, this also makes it a somewhat challenging ingredient to handle as its bitterness needs to be balanced out with added sugar or other sweeteners for most tastes. The common pitfalls when using baking chocolate include not understanding its pure, robust flavor and consequently either using too much or too little in a recipe. Additionally, it's vital to remembering that unlike other chocolates, baking chocolate melts quickly and can burn easily if not carefully monitored. Maximizing the use of baking chocolate mainly revolves around balancing its strong flavor with other ingredients. A great hack is to melt the baking chocolate in a double boiler to prevent it from burning. Also, when mixing it with a recipe, it pairs really well with ingredients that can cut through the bitterness like coffee or vanilla extract. A little known tip is that adding a small amount of fat (like a pat of butter or a drizzle of olive oil) can actually help the chocolate melt more smoothly and prevents it from seizing when it cools.