Natural cocoa powder substitutes

Cocoa that has been washed with an alkaline solution, which neutralises its acidity and darkens it. It is the cocoa most European brands sell and the reason recipes bother to specify which type they want.

Best for

chocolate cakes, brownies, cookies, frostings, hot chocolate

The flavour swap is genuinely pleasant. Dutch cocoa tastes rounder, darker and smoother, with less of the sour, almost raspberry-ish edge natural cocoa has, and the crumb comes out a shade closer to black than reddish-brown. The problem is chemistry, not taste. In a recipe leavened only with baking soda, the natural cocoa was the acid, and Dutch cocoa brings none, so the soda has nothing to react with. You get a flat, slightly soapy, metallic-tasting cake that never rises properly. Adding a teaspoon of vinegar or lemon juice per ½ teaspoon of soda closes that gap, and you will not taste it. If the recipe uses baking powder only, change nothing at all. If it uses both, adjust only the soda. In frostings, puddings, ganache, hot chocolate and anything unleavened, swap freely and enjoy the upgrade.

Solid 100 percent chocolate, which is essentially cocoa solids with the cocoa butter still in it.

Best for

brownies, chocolate cakes, puddings, sauces, frostings

The best swap in terms of chemistry, and one worth knowing: unsweetened baking chocolate is made from beans that have not been alkalized, so it is mildly acidic like natural cocoa and your baking soda still has something to react with. It also tastes fuller and less dusty, because the cocoa butter carries flavour that defatted powder cannot. The catch is fat and moisture. An ounce of chocolate is roughly half cocoa butter, so you must pull a tablespoon of butter or oil out or the batter turns greasy and the cookies spread thin. Melt it gently, let it cool to barely warm before it meets eggs, and expect a slightly denser, fudgier crumb than the cocoa version.

Cold-pressed, unroasted or lightly roasted cocoa powder sold in health-food aisles, never alkalized.

Best for

brownies, smoothies, energy balls, cakes, hot chocolate

Chemically the closest thing on this list, because raw cacao is non-alkalized by definition, so the acid that activates your baking soda is still there and the recipe behaves normally. What changes is the flavour and the drink-ability: cacao is more bitter, more astringent and noticeably fruitier, with a tannic grip at the back of the mouth that some people love in a brownie and dislike in a cake. It is also slightly coarser and does not dissolve as smoothly into liquid, so whisk it into hot water or milk first if you are making a drink or a pudding. A little extra sugar or a pinch of salt tames the bitterness.

Heavily alkalized cocoa, the ingredient that makes chocolate sandwich cookies look almost ink-black.

Best for

cookies, crumb crusts, layer cakes, cocoa dusting

Only worth reaching for if you want the colour, and it is a poor one-for-one swap. Black cocoa is alkalized even harder than Dutch cocoa, so it brings zero acidity and needs the same soda-to-powder fix, and it is very low in fat, which makes baked goods drier and more crumbly if you use it alone. Its flavour is oddly not very chocolatey either: it reads dry, smoky and biscuity rather than fruity or rich. Cutting it half and half with another cocoa gives you the dramatic colour without the chalky texture.

Roasted, ground carob pod, used as a caffeine-free stand-in for cocoa.

Best for

caffeine-free baking, brownies, muffins, hot drinks

Be clear-eyed about this one: carob does not taste like chocolate. It is malty, date-like and naturally sweet, with a roasted, faintly earthy finish and none of cocoa's bitterness, so a carob brownie tastes like a sweet toffee-ish brownie rather than a chocolate one. It is also only weakly acidic, so it cannot be trusted to activate baking soda on its own. If your recipe relies on that, add a teaspoon of vinegar or lemon juice per ½ teaspoon of soda as you would with Dutch cocoa. Where carob genuinely wins is caffeine-free and theobromine-free baking, and it absorbs less liquid than cocoa, so batters come out slightly looser.

Sweetened chocolate standing in for unsweetened powder, which means you are adding sugar and fat you then have to subtract.

Best for

brownies, sauces, frostings, puddings

Honest answer: this is a rough conversion, not a clean one, and it only works where a slightly denser and sweeter result is acceptable. Semi-sweet chocolate is roughly half sugar and half cocoa liquor, so two ounces gets you near the cocoa solids in three tablespoons of powder while dumping about two tablespoons of sugar and a tablespoon of fat into the bowl. Take both back out. Even then the cocoa flavour will be milder and sweeter, and chips in particular contain emulsifiers that keep them from melting into a smooth batter, so chop a bar if you have one. Do not attempt this in a delicate cake where the cocoa also provides dry bulk and structure. It works in brownies and sauces and nowhere else.