substituting cocoa for SR flour to convert recipe to chocolate cake?

[merlin777]

Is there a guide for how to substitute cocoa for self raising flour in a cake recipe to change it to a chocolate cake?

I've seen some recipes where they say to omit x grams of flour and substitute for the same amount of cocoa. Is there a formula for how many percent you need to swap and if you need to add some baking powder to compensate if the flour removed is self raising?

tia

My mum (and Grandma) both told me to take out a couple of tablespoons of flour and add a couple of tablespoons of cocoa instead. Never weighed it or added baking powder .

what Ineed said...and as far as the baking powder goes, i also wouldn't bother.

you maybe need a teaspoon or two to 6 or 8 oz of plain flour, so if you scale that to how much raising agent would have been removed in the two tbs of flour then it's not going to make any difference over all.

I generally work with the 100/100/100/2 eggs recipe, so if I use cocoa I do 75g flour and 25g cocoa (roughly, a few grams here or there makes no difference) If I've run out of cocoa and use drinking chocolate (it works!) then I'll leave out some sugar as well and increase the chocolate but tbh you don't have to be exact with any of it.

I've never thought of losing the raising power by losing flour! I've not noticed it making much difference.

If you were worried about it, you could use plain flour and add the requisite amount of baking powder yourself.

Thanks everyone! I'll try swapping 25% of the flour for cocoa and ignore the BP. Let you know what happens!

ooh in my Mary Berry book she makes a paste of cocoa powder and warm water ( say 4 tsps of each so you get a thick paste) and then add that to the cake mix so no need to remove flour. Works well and means you can use a plain sponge recipe without worrying.

how much of that paste should you use?

I think there is something with the acidity of cocoa powder which makes substitutions tricky.

Hope it works.

depends on the size of cake. I'd use 4 -5 teaspoons cocoa and 4-5 teaspoons hot water for a large Victoria sponge sized cake (4 egg size) but I like chocolate cakes to taste of chocolate rather than just being brown. You just make up what you need and use it all.