(chocolate cake - chocolate) + x = yellow cake; solve for x

August 20, 2008 4:34 PM

How to convert a chocolate cake to a yellow cake?

I have a recipe for mocha cake that has the perfect fluffy moist texture that I love. I'd like to convert it to a yellow cake. The recipe calls for 3 ounces of unsweetened chocolate. Since there's 1 tbsp fat in each ounce of chocolate, I know that amounts to 3 tbsp butter, but what do I substitute for the cocoa? Would flour work? Is there another dry ingredient I can use instead of the cocoa powder and still retain the texture of the cake? OR is there an appropriate non-chocolate-flavored substitute for unsweetened chocolate?

posted by asras to Food & Drink (2 answers total)

You could try substituting white chocolate for the regular chocolate - keeps the fat, doesn't really impart much flavour. But simply omitting the cocoa is probably fine and doing the substitution of butter for cocoa fat will probably work. Cocoa doesn't really contribute any structural element to the cake.
posted by GuyZero at 4:40 PM on August 20, 2008

I know that when adapting a yellow cake recipe to make a chocolate cake, you substitute some of the flour with an equal weight of cocoa. So if there is dry cocoa in the recipe, I would suggest replacing it with an equal weight of flour (cake or all-purpose, whichever the recipe calls for). If the recipe only calls for chocolate, I would replace with only butter or follow GuyZero's suggestion of substituting with white chocolate.
posted by amelioration at 7:23 PM on August 20, 2008