Guittard Chocolate Baking Tips
Amy Guittard is the great-great-granddaughter of the founder of the Guittard Chocolate Company and the company's marketing director, and you can imagine her vast knowledge of chocolate. She also authored the Guittard Chocolate Cookbook, where she shares a collection of family recipes that have been passed down for generations and shares three of her biggest tips on baking with chocolate.
Tip #1: Experiment and compare.
Compare and contrast chocolate baking bars, chips, and wafers side by side in a cookie experiment, using the different types of chocolate and see how each comes to life.
This also applies to other chocolate desserts, like brownies using cocoa powder versus unsweetened chocolate can cause different effects. One is going to be cakey and the other fudgy.
Tip #2: Think outside of the baking box.
Play with chocolate in ways you wouldn’t normally think to play with it, like adding it into a dish, melting it down to be dipped or using it in another application.
Tip #3: Bake with single-origin chocolate.
At Guittard, cacao beans come from a wide range of equatorial countries around the world, including Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, Ghana and the Côte d’Ivoire.
When you practice pairing chocolate with different things you begin to get comfortable with tasting and start to pick up on the nuances of flavors in chocolate and you’ll start to see how the flavor harmonizes with other paired flavors.
Guittard Baking Chocolate for Baking
Guittard also offers a suggestion of the perfect chocolates to use to start out your chocolate baking adventure at home.
1. Super Cookie Chips: have a deep chocolate flavor in this semisweet chip; a unique shape for a distinct cookie.
2. Extra Dark Baking Chips: are Extra dark, extra intense, with subtle notes of vanilla.
3. 100% Cacao Unsweetened Chocolate Bar: This 100% cacao baking bar is a distinct liquor that delivers flavors of fruit and spices amidst a deep base chocolate; bitterness gives way to a subtle floral sweetness adding a unique layer of complexity.
4. A can of Grand Cacao: Premium Collection Etienne chocolate is finely ground and added into fine-quality, old-fashioned, Dutch process cocoa powder to achieve intense chocolate flavor; a full-bodied, creamy texture; rich, red-brown, dark chocolate color; and comforting, home made, pudding-like, baked chocolate aromas.
Guittard baking chocolates are made in small batches, in a wide range of finishes and flavors including semisweet, extra dark, milk, butterscotch, mint and more. Delicious cookies, desserts, truffles, ganaches, brownies, candies and more all begin with the very finest ingredients, Guittard Chocolates.