← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
The Secret(s) to Baking With Chocolate (Food for Thought)
00:25:28
Chocolate as a baking ingredient is both decadent and delicate. Pastry chef Michelle Song shares tips and recipes from her new cookbook, Chocolate Lover.
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Michelle Song
Our state has changed a lot in.
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Caller/Listener
The last 140 years.
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Alison Stewart
We know because Multicare has been here.
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Michelle Song
Guided by a single making our communities healthier. That comes from making courageous decisions, partnering with local communities to grow programs and services, and expanding healthcare access to those who need it most. Together, we're building a healthier future.
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Caller/Listener
Learn more@mycare.org.
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Alison Stewart
If your small business is booming, you might say Cha Ching.
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Caller/Listener
But you should say, like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
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Alison Stewart
And we'll help your growing business. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Hey, hate to do this. Could we reschedule our morning hike? I was just about to ask the same next week. Yes, it's Dunkin Original Blend time.
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Caller/Listener
Staying at home with Duncan. Don't mind if I do.
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Alison Stewart
The home with Duncan is where you want to be suffering from dry, tired, irritated eyes. Don't let dry eyes win. Use Sustain Pro. It hydrates, restores and protects dry eyes for up to 12 hours. Sustain Pro Triple Action Dry Eye Relief.
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Caller/Listener
Listener supported WNYC Studios.
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Alison Stewart
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. It's Thursday, which means it's time for another Food for Thought conversation. Today we are diving headlong into a big pool of chocolate at its most melty and gooey. But chocolate isn't like other flavors. It's sweet and bitter at the same time. It has emotional resonances. Depending on the context, it can evoke warm feelings of family or even romance. So, listeners, we can take your calls about baking with chocolate. What are your favorite uses for this versatile, delicate flavor? What kind of questions do you have about working with chocolate? 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC. You can call that number or text us. Or if you'd like to call in and tell us how chocolate might have emotional resonance for you and what memories you have set around chocolate, we'd like to hear it. 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC. Our social is LVIT WNYC. My guest is Michelle Song, pastry chef, chef and author of the new cookbook Chocolate A Baking Book. Michelle, thanks for being here.
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Michelle Song
Thank you so much for having me. I'm glad I could join you from San Diego.
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Alison Stewart
There are so many forms of chocolate you mention in the book. There's chips, there's bars, there's sauces, there's cake. But first of all, when you hear the word chocolate, what pops into your mind?
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Michelle Song
I'm gonna have to Go with the classic chocolate chip cookie. I think everybody loves a good chocolate chip cookie.
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Alison Stewart
When in the introduction you say that your love language is chocolate, it has a resonance for you. Why does chocolate pull at our heartstrings in a way that, say, like an umami flavor or a spicy flavor doesn't?
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Michelle Song
I think, like you said before, chocolate evokes a lot of memories for people. I know, for me personally, when I look back, I associate chocolate with my childhood memories. It's woven into my family's traditions. Chocolate is celebrated in big, you know, life milestones. And I know others can probably say the same. So for me, it was the assorted seas chocolate box that my mom would buy at Christmas every year, or it was the yellow chocolate cake that I'd request for my birthday. Or it's, you know, teaching your kids how to bake. You know, starting with the box brownie mix or, you know, the recipe on the back of the Nestle Toll House chocolate chips. For chocolate chip cookies.
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Alison Stewart
Most people know about the major chocolate varieties. Milk chocolate, dark chocolate, semi sweet. And you go ahead and you call for white chocolate. First of all, is white chocolate a real thing?
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Michelle Song
That is a highly debated topic. So technically, you know, the purists are going to say white chocolate is not considered a true chocolate because it doesn't have the cocoa solids in it. But white chocolate does contain cocoa, but which is part of the cocoa bean. So, you know, you have to give it some grace there. So I would consider it a chocolate. And, you know, when I do think of chocolate varieties, I always do include white chocolate in that category.
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Alison Stewart
All right, so you think about the role of the different chocolates. Milk dark, semi sweet, white, alongside other flavors that you're baking. Can you tell us the role of milk chocolate?
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Michelle Song
Yeah, milk chocolate, it tends to be a bit sweeter. So milk chocolate, they can kind of range in the percentages between like 10 to 45, which is on the high end for a milk chocolate. And so since milk chocolate contains both the cocoa solids along with milk solids and a lot of sugar, then I like to use milk chocolate more for, like, cookies or it's really good for coating candy like candy bars.
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Alison Stewart
Dark chocolate, what do we use it for?
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Michelle Song
Dark chocolate is typically my go to chocolate. I think it has a really balanced flavor. Oftentimes people will say it's a little bit bitter, but it depends on, you know, what percentage of dark chocolate you're using. So I like to go for like a 60% dark chocolate. I think it's balanced. It has that intense Chocolate flavor, a little bit of the bitterness, but it's great to use in anything from cookies, brownies, cakes, to pastries.
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Alison Stewart
And what about semi sweet chocolate?
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Michelle Song
Semi sweet? I think everybody associates semi sweet chocolate with the chocolate chip. You know, like the Nestle chocolate chip cookies. It's also another great chocolate. It's a little bit lower on the percentage of cocoa. So it's usually between like a 35% to a 60% chocolate. And again, I think it also has a good balance of both the sweet from the sugar as well as the. The bitterness from the. From the cocoa.
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Alison Stewart
All right, and we have a call, Huxley from Bushwick about white chocolate. Hi, Huxley, thanks for calling.
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Caller/Listener
Hello, you're on the air. Oh, that's awesome. All right. Well, I have a question about white chocolate. It tastes like, salty and then sweet. It doesn't really taste like chocolate at all. But I've always really enjoyed it as a snack. But I never really see a white chocolate cake or many white chocolate candy bars. I'm wondering what sets it apart from regular chocolate. All right, we covered that a little bit.
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Alison Stewart
But you can also give him a recipe because you have many in the book that include white chocolate.
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Michelle Song
Yeah, so I agree with you. You know, chocolate. White chocolate does lack the cocoa solid, so it doesn't have that, you know, chocolate color to it, but it does have cocoa butter. And I know that some people will say that white chocolate is cloyingly sweet sometimes. So I know that a lot of people who don't like white chocolate will usually argue that it's too sweet in comparison to other chocolates. But I kind of use that to my advantage in my cookbook. And so I often like to pair white chocolate with lemon. So the lemon kind of cuts down on that. On that sugar sweetness. And in my cookbook, I have a recipe for a lemon cream tart, which is just.
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Caller/Listener
Which is like a. I'm sorry, it's.
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Michelle Song
Kind of a nod to Pierre Hermes lemon cream tart. And it. I'm sorry, I think my wi fi is breaking up. Can you hear me?
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Alison Stewart
I can hear you. Okay. Yeah. You know what? You know what we're going to do? We're going to go to maybe go to commercial, and then that way we can check your line and make sure everything's okay. By the way, my guest is Michelle Song. The name of the book is Chocolate Lover, A Baking Book. We'll check on her line and we'll have more after a quick break. This is all of it. This is all of it on WNYC I'm Alison Stewart. We're talking about baking with chocolate on this food for Thought. My guest is Michelle Song, a pastry chef and author of the new cookbook Chocolate and a Baking Book. We've got you on the phone. Can you hear me, Michelle?
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Caller/Listener
I can hear you. Can you hear me now? I'm so sorry that.
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Alison Stewart
No, you sound great. No problem. Let's talk about cocoa powders. Most recipes in the book use Dutch processed cocoa powder. Why do you prefer to use this kind of powder?
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Caller/Listener
So Dutch cocoa is alkalized and it's treated with an alkalizing agent which sort of neutralizes the acidity that's in cocoa powder and it gives it more of a neutral ph if we're going to get scientific. And that also results in a darker color and also a smoother, more balanced taste compared to natural or unsweetened cocoa powder like the Hershey's cocoa powder that has a slightly more acidic profile to it and it also has a lighter, almost reddish brown color to it and also results in a little bit more bitter flavor, in my opinion. So I usually opt to to use Dutch cocoa powder just both for its taste and its color.
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Alison Stewart
Well, what should folks look like look for on the package to know they've got Dutch processed cocoa powder?
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Caller/Listener
Yeah. The one I like to use is Hershey's Special Dark it's called. And then Ghirardelli also makes a 100% Dutch processed cocoa powder.
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Alison Stewart
What about the process of blooming cocoa powder?
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Caller/Listener
Blooming is a great way to kind of activate your cocoa powder. So I like to mix my cocoa powder with a hot liquid or fat. So it could be hot boiling water, coffee or even tea. And then you just mix that with cocoa powder and it just activates it. And the technique kind of enhances both the flavor but also improves the texture, so cutting down on potentially some graininess that you may have from cocoa powder.
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Alison Stewart
We are talking about baking with chocolate listeners. What are your favorite uses for this versatile, delicate flavor or questions do you have about working with chocolate in the kitchen? Our number is 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC. You can call into us or you can text us or you can reach out on social at all of it. Wnyc. Let's talk to Giovanni in the West Village. Hi, Giovanni.
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Caller/Listener
Hi you guys. This is a great segment. I'm glad we. So you asked for memories of chocolate. I was a New York City kid having had only American chocolate Hershey bars. Then of course I backpacked over to Europe and had my sketchy knapsack and found my way to Brussels and had those famous milk chocolate ganache shells. And I just sat in the town Square, these 15th century buildings, just inhaling this chocolate and people were loving it. The store gave me another box. So that's a fun memory. I've tried to make ganache at home. It just, it's just never elegant. It never works. Is it, is it technique? Do I burn it? Is it the. Am I, am I not spending the money on, on the best chocolate? I'd love you guys to dovetail into that topic, should you wish. Thank you.
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Alison Stewart
Well, I have one of my questions right here for you, Giovanni. How do you perfect a ganache?
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Caller/Listener
Yeah, well, when I'm going to make a ganache, well, first, things to know about chocolate. So I hear you say sometimes you have problems with working with a ganache. So when you're working with chocolate, it's important to know that chocolate hates two things. It hates high heat and it hates water. So oftentimes like when you're melting chocolate, you're melting a double boiler. So just make sure you're not getting any of that kind of steam from the water into the chocolate, otherwise it will seize. And a lot of times I know that ganache can seize because the chocolate's too hot and it kind of burns and it turns into this kind of grainy clump. So in order to get a smooth, easy ganache, I like to just roughly chop my chocolate. You don't need to use, you know, the luxurious chocolate like Valrhona. You can use any store bought chocolate, not to quote Ina, but store bought is great. So you can use Ghirardelli, you could use, you could even use Lindt is also a great chocolate. And you say just chop the chocolate finely. You put it into a heat safe bowl and then on the stove you're going to heat heavy cream. And then once that heavy cream comes to a boil, then you're going to pour that over the chocolate, let the cream sit on the chocolate for about 60 seconds or so. So it kind of tempers the chocolate a little bit. And then after 60 seconds, then stir it in one kind of one circular motion with a whisk and it should come together.
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Alison Stewart
Well, what about if I need to melt chocolate? You just said that chocolate doesn't like heat.
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Caller/Listener
Yeah. So there's two methods that I like to use for melting chocolate. I know a lot of people like to melt chocolate in the microwave, but I would say if you're going to use the microwave method. I would mainly stick to smaller portions of chocolate because the microwave is, it's such a high temperature that it can get away from you really quickly. So when you're using the microwave, a tip I like to use is melting it in first. So I like to use my microwave on like a 10% power. I don't like to go full power because again, that's a little bit too hot. And then I also melt it in firsts of about 30 seconds, take out the chocolate, stir it a little bit, then put it back in the microwave for another 30 seconds and then keep repeating that process until it's melted all the way through. And then another method is using a double boiler. So you're going to fill a pot with water about like an inch in water and then on top of that you're going to put a bowl and then you'll have your chopped chocolate in that bowl and then you just gently heat that over a low heat.
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Alison Stewart
Got some great text here. Chocolate just makes my life better. I'm a chocolate snob who makes my own chocolate treats at home. My favorite vessel for chocolate is hot milk with a chai blend base. When buying, I always look for 80% plus with a good, well rounded flavor that enriches the palate. The best chocolate I found is made right here in Brooklyn. They source it from family farms, test for heavy metals, and have a vegan option. It's called Raca. They often, by the way, support wnyc. Okay, this one says white chocolate covered slices of lemon is delicious. I used to buy it at Lilac, the famous Manhattan chocolate store. That says a high agree for me. Let's talk to Amanda calling from Brooklyn. Hi, Amanda.
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Caller/Listener
Hi, thanks for taking my call.
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Alison Stewart
Yeah, you're on the air.
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Caller/Listener
Yeah, so I just wanted to talk a little bit about my favorite way to bake with chocolate, which is, you know, baking brownies. I always use this recipe by Allison Cave, who used to own Butter and Scotch, a great bakery bar in Brooklyn. And, and her book is called First Prize Pies. And she taught me through that book all about the importance of using espresso powder. There's something about baking like brownies or anything baked with chocolate and using a little espresso powder that seems to make everything taste richer. I don't know what the science is there. Maybe one of you can help me, but I do it like religiously now. So just wanted to speak on that and wondering if you could explain to me why that works.
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Alison Stewart
Amanda, thanks for calling in. What do you think, Michelle?
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Caller/Listener
Yeah, I agree with you. I love using espresso powder paired with chocolate. I don't know the exact science behind it, but I just know that it enhances that chocolate flavor. It just goes so well together. And when I'm using espresso powder, often I like to, if I'm using it in like per se, a cookie recipe, sometimes I'll dissolve the espresso powder so you kind of reduce a little bit of that graininess. But it's great. Like you said with brownies, it's great in cakes. I often use it in a lot of, a lot of chocolate recipes.
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Alison Stewart
Our guest is Michelle Song. She's a pastry chef and cookbook author. Chocolate Lover A Baking Book. We want to hear about your favorite chocolate recipes. Or maybe you have a question about working with chocolate in the kitchen. 2124-339692-21243. You can call us or you can text to us. 212-433-9692. Okay, you picked out some recipes to talk about today, and they range from easy to challenging. So we'll start with the easy fudgy shiny top brownies. You said that you cracked the code on this after trying dozens of times. What were you trying to do?
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Caller/Listener
Yeah, so my brownie recipe is a nod to that boxed brownie. You know, it has that paper thin shiny top. And so I was testing all the different methods to kind of always guarantee that I'm always going to get that shiny top that everybody loves so much when the brownies come out of the oven. And so I found that the best method is to dissolve the sugar fully. I don't know the science behind it, but dissolved sugar will result in that shiny top that we're looking for. And so I like to dissolve my sugar with the eggs over a double boiler just to ensure that all of the sugar breaks down. I've tried other methods before where you whip your eggs with the sugar in a stand mixer, but it doesn't always guarantee the results I'm looking for. But the double boiler method to me is foolproof.
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Alison Stewart
But then two pages over you have crackly top brownies.
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Caller/Listener
So how do you get them to crackle?
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Alison Stewart
Yeah, it's two different ones.
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Caller/Listener
Yeah. So I like to include, I have a few brownie recipes in this cookbook just because I feel like brownies are everybody's go to comfort treat. Yeah. So the crackle brownies, it does use the stand mixer method where I whip the eggs with the sugar for 10 minutes, a long time. So you want to get the eggs and the sugar nice and airy and voluminous. So it dissolves the sugar but also will yield kind of that meringue like crackly crust on the top the of the brownie.
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Alison Stewart
So let's move on to chocolate chiffon cake. It's the intermediate recipe you picked. You write that the secret to this recipe is adding melted chocolate for quote, an extra punch of chocolatey goodness while still maintaining the integrity of the delicate and airy texture. So what makes this recipant a chiffon cake as opposed to a cake cake?
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Caller/Listener
Yeah, chiffon cakes are somewhere in between like a sponge cake and angel food cake. So angel food cakes rely solely on using the egg whites for the leavening power, whereas the chiffon cake uses both whipped egg whites as well as the egg yolks. And it also has a little bit of baking powder to help with some of that leavening. So the chiffon cake has a little bit more richness than an angel food cake would, but it still has that tall, light and airy crumb.
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Alison Stewart
It's interesting because there are a lot of different cakes in this book. Chocolate lover, a baking book. There's a recipe made with stout, there's a chocolate zucchini cake. How do you get the chocolate to take on different roles and different textures?
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Caller/Listener
Yeah, so again it's just by different methods. So the chocolate zucchini cake has a lot of grated zucchini which is great. It is a great summertime recipe when you have all that zucchini and then you pair that with the cocoa powder. And again, for all my cakes or most of my cakes, I like to bloom the cocoa powder as I said before. And blooming the cocoa powder will just get you that deep, rich, chocolatey flavor and also will deliver kind of more of that darker color in the chocolate that you're looking for. And yeah, each of the cakes are different. So the chiffon cake is more of like a sponge cake. I have my go to chocolate cake which is just that, that classic chocolate cake kind of like that Hershey's black magic cake. And then I do have a twice baked chocolate cake that's got that fudgy layer and it's more kind of like a flourless chocolate cake. So they each have different textures to them.
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Alison Stewart
Got a text that says my nephew is allergic to the chemical compounds found in the cocoa bean. So we can't have real chocolate. Or what would be a good substitute that tastes familiar, tastes similar for him to enjoy. Any ideas?
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Caller/Listener
Oh, wow. So he's allergic to all of the different compounds in the cocoa bean. So does that include the cocoa solids and the cocoa butter? I don't know. Yeah, that's a tough one. Another good chocolate. Without using chocolate, could hazelnut be used? Yeah, maybe hazelnut.
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Alison Stewart
Think about that one.
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Caller/Listener
Yeah, I'll have to think about that. That's a good question though. Here's one I'm research that.
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Alison Stewart
I have four distinct memories about chocolate. The first is making chocolate molds with my mom and sister when we were kids. Next is the first time I walked into a French boulangerie and bought a pain au chocolate in Paris. I was astonished how delicious it was. The chocolate tasted more real. Next, I worked for a recruiter to find a store manager for La Maison du Chocolat. I had to research chocolate of the world of nyc, which was fascinating. And last, regards, ceramics. I make slip cast pieces and guy in our studio decided to use grandmother's antique chocolate molds which turned out to be so beautifully when converted into porcelain. Oh my goodness. They were really something. Chocolate makes memories sweeter. Thank you for that. That was a great.
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Caller/Listener
I love that.
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Alison Stewart
My guest is Michelle Song. Her book is called Chocolate A Cooking Book. Okay, so your difficult recipe you gave us is cookies and cream puffs. What makes this one a challenge?
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Caller/Listener
So I think anytime you're making a cream puff, it's just the challenge is the time. So it's a great weekend baking project because there's three different components. So you need to make the cream filling, you need to make the pate a jus, and then you're also going to make the chocolate crackling cookie on top of it. So it's not a super hard recipe to master. It's just more of a time consuming recipe. But it's worth the time and effort.
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Alison Stewart
Tell me. Yeah, tell me a little more about how you make it.
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Caller/Listener
So I love this recipe because the filling is anamalaka and that means creamy in Japanese and it just makes an ethereal cream filling. And it gets its help from gelatin, surprisingly. So you don't need any eggs like you would a pastry cream. And the texture is sort of like a mix between a ganache and a mousse.
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Alison Stewart
Ooh, that sounds really good. Here's another text. My favorite use for cocoa would have to be my mom's famous babka recipe. Of course, it doesn't ever come out.
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Caller/Listener
Yeah, right.
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Alison Stewart
It doesn't ever come out as good as hers.
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Caller/Listener
Ha ha.
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Alison Stewart
Also, the woman who works at my local supermarket I've become friends with over the years. She has the most beautiful, flawless, cocoa colored skin. I asked her what her beauty secret is for her perfect skin. She told me that her first secret is genetics. Okay. But that she also makes her own makeup using cocoa as the pigment to get the perfect color. I wonder if the antioxidant, other benefits of cocoa have something to do with it.
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Caller/Listener
Wow. Wow. That is the first. I've never heard of using cocoa powder for skincare, but I think you're onto something. I think your friend's onto something. I could definitely see that. You know, everybody says chocolate's good for you, so it's probably good for your skin too.
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Alison Stewart
Here's another one I recently had chocolate panna cotta at Luigiano's Parmigiano red Italian restaurant in Montclair. It was amazing. That was Charles and Teaneck. Oh, we're getting a lot of texts saying that you could use carob instead of chocolate.
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Caller/Listener
Oh, right, that's a good one.
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Alison Stewart
Would you agree with that, Michelle?
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Caller/Listener
Yeah, that's a great. Can you hear me? Yeah, that's a great option. Sorry. I'm so sorry about my wi fi today.
- [25:02]
Alison Stewart
That's okay. All right. Finally we'll dive into our banana buckwheat chocolate chunk cookies. So that was one you picked as a wild card. Why did you pick this as your wild card?
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Caller/Listener
Yeah, this is a take on that classic chocolate chip cookie. So instead of using just all purpose flour, I like to substitute in a portion of buckwheat flour. And I think buckwheat just works so great with chocolate. Has sort of a nutty flavor which works great with chocolate. And then I also include a bit of mashed banana in it and that just yields a really chewy texture. So chocolate, banana and buckwheat, it's a great combination.
- [25:44]
Alison Stewart
We're almost out of time but I wanted to ask a final question about the economics of chocolate. This year according to the BBC, cocoa prices are at an all time high and there's suggestion that it's probably only get more expensive as climate change makes it harder and harder, more expensive to grow. Have you found these global economic developments in your work?
- [26:08]
Caller/Listener
Yeah, chocolate is very expensive. Cocoa powder and then depending on what type of chocolate you're buying, if you're going to buy the store bought chocolate or if you're going to buy luxury chocolate like Velro, it can be really, really expensive. I think one bag of Valrhona chocolate is about like $60 or so. So it's really expensive. But I will say that to make good chocolate desserts you don't have to use exclusively luxury chocolate. You can make really great desserts with just store bought chocolate.
- [26:42]
Alison Stewart
The name of the book is Chocolate A Baking Book. It is by Michelle Song. Michelle, thanks so much for joining us.
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Caller/Listener
Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it. Perrigold is the destination for luxury home. We've brought the world's best design brands together in one place.
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