Lessons

Well when something doesn't turn out the way you want it to....there is a lesson to be learned.
I love dark chocolate. I prefer semisweet over milk. When M&Ms came out with the dark chocolate ones I didn't mearly eat them I devoured. So I decided to buy Hersey's dark cocoa for stocking up the new kitchen. I then decided to make some brownies for a dinner I was going to attend. Well let me just say lesson learned. From here on out I will buy regualar cocoa.

As explained in Dessert First's wonderful post called Crash Cource in Cocoa, dark cocoa powder is pressed with alkali which reduces the acidity of the chocolate therefore mellowing the flavor. This is not exactly what I wanted to have on hand....a mellow chocolate. I never knew about this, I have heard of buying dutched cocoa and thought that it would be a deeper chocolatier flavor. But I had never used it, partly because my mom always did the shopping and kept regular cocoa powder. In a way the fact that I didn'thave the knoledge eats away at me because on some level I feel like I should have known. But I guess it is better to learn first hand than to just assume. There are many many many things I do not know about baking and cooking so I guess I had better get used to it. Therefore, this is my first little lesson learned in my first little kitchen. I am pretty sure it won't be the last.