Dutch-process cocoa powder

Cacao en poudre alcalinisé

What it is

Alkalising cocoa to pH 7-8 darkens it and rounds it off, and the process took its name from the Netherlands and from Coenraad van Houten, whose 1828 press had made cocoa powder possible in the first place. Colour is not strength: the alkali carries off flavour acids along with the sharpness, so the blackest powders often taste the weakest.

In the kitchen

It has no acid left to react with bicarbonate of soda, so a recipe written for natural cocoa needs baking powder instead - roughly four times the weight of the soda you take out. It disperses cleanly into hot liquid where natural cocoa clumps.

Goes with

Butter Coffee Cream T55 flour Cocoa butter Orange

Same species

Blond chocolate Cocoa mass Cacao pulp Cocoa butter Cocoa bean husk Cocoa nibs

Also used with

Lambda carrageenan

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