Chocolate Baking Essentials

This curated Chocolate Baking Essentials collection highlights a trio of cacao-derived ingredients for baking: three surprisingly different textures and flavors from crunchy roasted cocoa nibs, to sweet cacao fruit jam, to smooth finished 70% single-origin chocolate. We’ve included our “Maybe The Very Best Chocolate Chip Cookie” recipe to get you started, and we encourage you to dive deep into your pantry to bake up your own chocolate adventure.

Pair this with Making Chocolate: from Bean to Bar to S’more: our 366-page hardcover book that includes everything we've learned about making chocolate since the day we first cracked open a cocoa bean. It’s a complete guide to making chocolate from scratch at home, signed by all the authors. Learn simple kitchen hacks, like winnowing with a hairdryer, as well as the complex science and mechanics behind making and tasting chocolate. In Making Chocolate we also share recipes that include single-origin, two-ingredient chocolate—such as our European Drinking Chocolate, Chocolate Shortbread, and Red Velvet Beet Cake—to get you started.

Large Chips

Weighing in at 3.5 grams each, we modeled these “chocolate facets” after the hand-piped chips our kitchen team makes for our enormous cookies, famous in our cafés. Our 70% single-origin large chips are fully tempered with a snappy, smooth, shiny finish—great for chocolate dipping, confections, and baking.

Costa Esmeraldas, Ecuador 70% 2018 Large Chips (500 grams): In this 2018 harvest of Costa Esmeraldas, we taste notes of chocolate buttercream frosting and banana—perfect for baking. These large chips are the starting point for our kitchen’s “Maybe The Very Best Chocolate Chip Cookies” and “Dandelion Chocolate Scones.” Each bag contains enough chips to make two batches of Dandelion Chocolate’s own Chocolate Chip Cookies with a handful left over for nibbling.

Ground Chocolate

Ground chocolate is pure chocolate made from only cocoa beans and organic cane sugar, then ground into a coarse powder ideal for fast and easy melting. This is what our pastry kitchen prefers for hot chocolate, cakes, pies, and creams that call for melted chocolate. 

Camino Verde, Ecuador, 70% 2019 Chef’s Chocolate (500 grams): In this coarsely ground chocolate we taste notes of brown sugar, malt, and walnut. We recommend trying it in our recipe for Nibbuns, found on our blog and in our book, Making Chocolate: from Bean to Bar to S’more. 

Cocoa Nibs

Cocoa nibs are fermented, dried, and roasted cocoa beans broken into small pieces after the papery husks are removed. The holy grail of a bean-to-bar pastry kitchen, nibs are the purest expression of a cocoa bean’s flavor in all its delicious complexity. They can be punchy and acidic like ripe strawberries, toasty and nutty like roasted almonds, or creamy and sweet like peach ice cream.

Dandelion Chocolate, Costa Esmeraldas 2018 Harvest Cocoa Nibs (350 grams): In this harvest we taste notes of roasted nut and cocoa powder. We recommend using these nibs like nuts—in cookies, salads, breads, confections—anywhere you want to add a bit of crunch. They can be substituted for various nuts, or paired to accentuate real nuts’ flavors. They also impart the aroma of chocolate without adding sweetness, and are excellent infused in cream or liquor.

Cacao Fruit

welovejam, Cacao Fruit & Pineapple Jam (9 ounces): Eric Haeberli of welovejam makes this jam using just three ingredients: cacao fruit from San Pedro Sula, Honduras (the same partners who provide the cocoa beans for our Wampu, Honduras single-origin chocolate), pineapple, and sugar. It’s a tangy, refreshing jam (which surprisingly doesn’t taste at all like chocolate) with notes of juicy tropical fruit, torched caramel, and wildflower honey. We’ve used welovejam’s Cacao Fruit & Pineapple Jam in jelly rolls, truffles, pâte de fruit, and smeared on scones.

Ingredients:

Costa Esmeraldas, Ecuador 70% 2018 Large Chips and Camino Verde, Ecuador 70% 2019 Chef’s Chocolate: cocoa beans, organic cane sugar 

All of our single-origin chocolate is made with just cocoa beans and sugar; no added cocoa butter, lecithin, or vanilla. Our chocolate is free of soy, dairy, eggs, and wheat, and is made in a factory that does not process nuts.

Dandelion Chocolate, Costa Esmeraldas, Ecuador 2018 Cocoa Nibs: cocoa beans 

Made in an allergen-free facility. 

welovejam, Cacao Fruit & Pineapple Jam: cacao pulp, pineapple, and cane sugar

Made in an allergen-free facility.