I am making a Guinness chocolate cake and I need the color of it to turn out lighter to match the colors for a wedding. I have already used non Dutch processed cocoa but the lightest it got was maybe dark chocolate color. What I am going for is a carmel color. Is there anything I can do to bake a lighter cake?
Cake – Lighter chocolate cake
cakechocolate
Related Solutions
The magic emulsifier is probably soy lecithin.
According to Wikipedia:
It is used commercially in foods requiring a natural emulsifier or lubricant. In the food industry it has multiple uses: In confectionery it reduces viscosity, replaces more expensive ingredients, controls sugar crystallization and the flow properties of chocolate, helps in the homogeneous mixing of ingredients, improves shelf life for some products, and can be used as a coating.
The magic soluble is probably a hydrochloride:
Converting insoluble amines into hydrochlorides is a common way to make them water- and acid-soluble
Abstract: Ganache is delicious, but not everyone eats dairy. We examined whether coconut milk can be used for the creation of a non-dairy ganache. We ran a series of experiments. The answer is that, with some creative techniques, you can use it, but it does not come anywhere near to the real thing.
Introduction. Someone wrote a question on Seasoned advice about coconut based ganache and we got curious.
Background. We love ganache even more than pure chocolate, and make it often ourselves, so we think we have all the prerequisites needed to create and judge a coconut based ganache recipe. Our favorite ganache recipe 1 (which we used as a starting point) is: 100 g chocolate, 72% cocoa (only made from cocoa, sugar, and cocoa butter, no vegetable fat or emulsifiers); 100 g cream, at least 30% (non-UHT), 25 g butter.
Method. We prepared the base mix as follows: 25 g coconut milk were heated until boiling. They were removed from the heat. 25 g chocolate (72%) and 6g cocoa butter were added. Everything was left to dissolve. After 5 minutes, the mixture was whipped with a handheld mixer at the second-to-highest setting. This was Version 0. It was divided in two batches. Different versions were made from each batch by gradually adding guar (a knife-point-ful), egg yolk (1, in lieu of lecithine) and sugar (8g per batch). Each version was whipped for at least 3 minutes. The final versions (1c and 2b) where put for 30 min in the refrigerator, then taken out and whipped again. As there were no observable changes after the cold whipping, we do not treat them as a different version. We also made a small portion of dairy ganache for comparison purposes.
Results. These are listed in Table 1. The numbers in the ingredients columns of the table represent the order of adding the ingredients to the mixtures.
Table 1. Experiment results.
The final consistency of version 1c is documented in Figure 1. Note that the peaks do not drip and you can rotate the bowl at 180° without anything falling out. The piece of chocolate was added for color comparison.
Figure 2 shows a zoom of the blue bordered area in Figure 1.
Discussion. It is possible to make a profiterole filling with coconut milk based ganache, but it isn't quite like the real deal. Also, it resembles non-whipped ganache more closely than whipped ganache.
The basic ganache recipe can be done with coconut milk instead of cream and cocoa butter instead of butter. However, it tastes fattier than real ganache, and it is runnier. Unlike dairy ganache, whipping does not result in aeration.
We think that eliminating the cocoa butter altogether will somewhat alleviate the fatiness problem, but we did not test this proposal yet.
A thickening and or emulsifying agent can improve the ganache texture. Even though egg yolk improves aeration, is not a good choice, as it results in a slimy feel. Guar is a better solution.
The addition of sugar ruins the chocolateness of the taste. If bitterness is not desired, a sweeter chocolate (50%) should be used. Only dedicated sugar lovers or Americans should resort to adding sugar. In that case, it should be added before the guar (we would suggest dissolving it in the coconut milk before boiling it) as not to interfere with the texture of the final product.
Threats to validity. First, there was a single tester (the quasi-royal we). Second, this tester is already biased in favor of dairy products in general and specifically for dairy based ganache. Third, many interesting combinations (including xanthan gum and corn starch) could not be tested due to lack of resources.
Conclusion and outlook. We found the experiment very inspirating. It was also yummy. But we'd like to issue an warning: This experiment is dangerous. In the preparation phase, we discovered a penchant for guared coconut water deep fried in coconut fat we'd rather not have known about. Nevertheless, we are looking forward to offering the results for peer preview to a chocolate-loving lactose intolerant co worker.
References: 1 My own recipe book
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Best Answer
What you are asking for is physically impossible.
There is a reason why the color system when working with physical dyes (as opposed to colored light) is called additive. You cannot take out a color which is already there. When we are talking about a cake, cocoa powder or pure chocolate can be considered a pigment, and Guiness a pre-dyed liquid.
The first of three methods would be to add your cocoa and guiness as they are, but try to mix them with other stuff so You can use them to make new, darker colors by mixing in other pigments, or lighter colors by diluting them. You can certainly mix white cake batter with food coloring of other colors (yellow) and the right amount of chocolate to achieve a caramel color, but this will be very far from the proportion which gives you a chocolate cake which tastes of chocolate and has the right texture.
The second method would be to try to discolor the cocoa and guiness. But the problem is that you cannot change the color of a pigment without changing it chemically. Assuming that somebody can come up with a process which can bleach cocoa or chocolate, it will certainly change the taste a lot, if it is food safe at all. Probably not doable in a home kitchen either.
The third thing would be to replace the chocolate entirely. But there is no substitute which tastes like chocolate. I have never heard of the "chocolate extract" which Catija refers to, but even in cases where a flavor is dominated by a single note which is easily reproduced chemically (vanilla, banana, etc.), the stuff which makes up that single note does not taste like the real deal. And if something had exactly the same composition as cocoa, it would not only taste like cocoa, it would be cocoa, with its normal color. And that part concerns the flavor only. Even cocoa powder changes the texture of a cake, while real chocolate changes it much, much more. If you could make chocolate-perfumed cake, it would still not have the mouthfeel of chocolate cake.
Beside all the reasons why you cannot get chocolate flavor paired with a strange color, there is something else: Human perception is not limited to one sense. People rely a lot on vision when eating, and the experience of eating a strange-colored chocolate cake will not be the same "taste" experience as eating correctly colored chocolate cake. There are some fun studies with gummy bears and red/white wines which got lots of press about that, and some marketing gimmicks like the recent Mystery Mueller Milch in Germany, but this is not the place to elaborate. If you want your guests to enjoy a chocolate cake, you have to make a real chocolate cake, with the correct flavor, texture and color.
For completeness, you have the following options instead of making an amber chocolate cake (some already suggested in comments):