Add Instant Coffee To Make The Best Chocolate Cake

Everybody knows that chocolate and coffee are a match made in heaven — as well as a match made in mocha lattes, chocolate-covered espresso beans, and the like. If you're a cake baker, you might be looking for ways to combine these two ingredients in your own creations. There's just one problem: Baking is as much science as art, and dumping a hot liquid willy-nilly into a batter threatens to upset its delicate balance. You need wet and dry ingredients in proportion; coffee is also acidic, so too much might interfere with the leaveners that react to acidity, namely baking powder and baking soda.

There are few easy answers in life, but here's one: Use powdered instant coffee. Or, better yet, espresso powder — the concentrated essence of coffee. Unlike straight-up ground beans, these products are engineered to dissolve easily and can be added with the other dry ingredients. How much is up to you. Two or three teaspoons will yield full-on mocha flavors. But even a lesser amount, like a teaspoon, can have a profound effect. The powder imparts earthy notes that play beautifully off the bitter elements, subtly enhancing the chocolate flavor. Cocoa powder on its own, you may have noticed, doesn't have a particularly interesting flavor; like a muse inspiring a great artist, a bit of espresso powder will make your chocolate cake really sing.

And that's only the beginning: You can also add powdered espresso to brownie batter, cookie dough — anywhere a fragrant coffee note is desired.

The first thing to know is that you've got two options: If you're using a product labeled instant coffee, it might be a good idea to blitz it briefly in the coffee grinder to break down the coarse granules. Espresso powder should be ready to go out right of the container. This is a better move, too, because espresso powder is more potent and will provide a bolder flavor (widely available Medaglia D'Oro Instant Espresso Coffee is one brand I've worked with). This stuff, by the way, isn't finely ground beans; it's brewed espresso that's been dehydrated into a water-soluble powder.

For a toasty coffee flavor, add a teaspoon or two not just to cakes but to things like cookies and brownies — use it, for instance, to transform plain shortbread to aromatic espresso shortbread. But doughs and batters aren't all that benefit from espresso powder. It adds marvelous flavor to buttercream frostings; in this instance, avoid streaks in the frosting by mixing about a tablespoon of powder with a tablespoon of heavy cream or water to dissolve it beforehand. Ganache? Stir espresso powder into the cream as you heat it, before pouring it over chocolate (then if you sandwich dabs of ganache between two espresso shortbread cookies? Sublime!). Coffee ice cream full of deep espresso flavors? You get the idea: Invaluable and affordable, espresso powder deserves a place in your baking supplies just as much as vanilla extract and cocoa powder.