Cocoa Powder

Cocoa powder is what remains after cocoa butter has been pressed out of ground cacao beans. It concentrates the deep, complex chocolate flavour into a dry, fine powder that dissolves readily into liquids and blends smoothly into batters.

It is an essential ingredient in baking — used in cakes, brownies, biscuits, and icings — and is also stirred into milk for hot chocolate or used to dust desserts. Cocoa powder comes in two main types: natural (slightly acidic and fruity) and Dutch-processed (treated with alkali to neutralise acidity, giving a darker colour and mellower flavour).

In Australian supermarkets, both types are readily available. Dutch-processed is more common in everyday baking cocoa, while natural cocoa is often specified in recipes that use bicarbonate of soda as a leavener, since the acid in natural cocoa activates it.

Farmed
photograph to come — from twenty years of markets, farms and kitchens

How it's made

Cacao beans are fermented, dried, roasted, and then cracked to remove the shells, yielding cacao nibs. The nibs are ground into cocoa liquor, which is pressed to extract most of the cocoa butter. The remaining dry cake is cooled, broken up, and ground into a fine powder. For Dutch-processed cocoa, the nibs or powder are treated with an alkalising agent before or after pressing.

Nutrition (per 100g)

Energy 319kcal
Protein 22.1g
Carbs 10.5g
Fat 15.2g
Fibre 27.7g Sugar 1.5g
Mass Distribution

1 cup is about 86 g — roughly 270 kcal of this.

What it costs the planet (per kilo)

Carbon 92.44kg
Freshwater 1080.44L
Land 138.44m²

Where it comes from

Made from
Cacao, seeds

In the kitchen

Used as

baking chocolate base

Goes well with
butter sugar vanilla coffee milk
Classic dishes
  • Brownies
  • Chocolate Cake
  • Hot Chocolate
  • Tiramisu

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Where this data comes from

Nutrition data from

FSANZ + USDA

How it was calculated

Analysed

Full credits, licences, and methods: the sources page →

Where to next

made fromCacao, seeds goes well withbutter goes well withsugar goes well withvanilla goes well withcoffee goes well withmilk shares a sourceBaking Chocolate shares a sourceCacao Beans & Nibs shares a sourceChocolate Beverages shares a sourceChocolate Confectionery & Bars shares a sourceChocolate Puddings & Desserts shares a sourceChocolate Syrups & Sauces shares a sourceCocoa Butter shares a sourceDark Chocolate
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