The chocolate crisis is apparently not going away — here's the easy way to bake safely (plus a super chocolatey recipe)

A few specific chocolate products that tested as relatively safe by both Consumer Reports and As You Sow

By Leslie Brenner

Around this time last year, I purged my kitchen of all my favorite chocolate: organic Theo bars in myriad fabulous flavors; Valhrona cocoa powder; the Trader Joe’s organic bars that were great for baking. It was painful, but had to be done. The big question: Would I be able to find suitable replacements, or would I have to give up chocolate nibbling and baking in the name of health?

If you’re scratching your head and wondering what on earth I’m talking about, you’ve missed the alarming news of the last 13 months: Many of the most popular brands of chocolate have been found to contain dangerous levels of lead and cadmium. The dangerous products include brands favored by pastry chefs and serious home bakers.

In December 2022, Consumer Reports published an extensive article that laid out the dangers, and conducted its own tests on 28 bars. Then in October last year the publication updated that article, and revealed the findings of more testing — on cocoa powders, chocolate chips and brownie mixes. Consumer Reports’ work on the subject follows the important work  of As You Sow, a California-based nonprofit devoted to environmental and corporate responsibility. As You Sow has been testing chocolates for heavy metal since 2014, and provides to the public a searchable database of test results (scroll down on their Toxic Chocolate page to find it).

I woke up to the problem last February, when a New York Times health column asked “Do I Need to Avoid Dark Chocolate Now?” The article concluded that there’s “no reason to panic,” and quoted an assistant professor of behavioral health and nutrition at the University of Delaware as saying that if you eat chocolate often, you should consider choosing brands with lower concentrations of the harmful metals. At the same time, it reminded us that there is no established safe intake level for lead, because “even the lowest blood lead levels are associated with adverse neurodevelopmental effects in children.”

I dove in, checked Consumer Reports list of “safer” bars, and cross-referenced it with As You Sow’s test results. I then headed to the supermarket, came up with a selection of widely available dark chocolate products that tested as relatively safe, and wrote about it for the Cooks Without Borders newsletter.

At that time, it seemed pretty straightforward: Ghirardelli 100% cacao and 60% cacao premium baking bars were found by both organizations to be relatively safe. Ghirardelli also makes a 72% cacao bar — Intense Dark Twilight Delight — that Consumer Reports found to be safe; however, As You Sow’s testing showed it to have a dangerously high level of cadmium.

Cocoa powders: not so simple

Consumer Reports hadn’t yet tested cocoa powders, but As You Sow did, and it deemed Hershey’s Cocoa to be safe. (Most Hershey’s products tested as unsafe, but the unsweetened 100% cocoa passed As You Sow’s tests).

Now that Consumer Reports has also tested cocoa powders, the two organizations show conflicting results — CR found Hershey’s Cocoa to be unsafe, while it deems a number of cocoas safe that As You Sow found to be unsafe. At this point, there is not a single cocoa powder that both Consumer Reports and As You Sow consider safe.

Use a safe chocolate to make these Mexican Chocolate Situation bars, and you can safely enjoy one bar.

Safe chocolate chips and bars — with a caveat

Good news for chocolate-chip cookie lovers: Consumer Reports’ more recent testing found a number of widely available dark chocolate chips to be relative safe — including Ghirardelli 60% cacao, Nestlé Toll House Semi-Sweet Morsels, 365 Whole Foods Market Semisweet Chocolate Baking Chips and chips from Trader Joes, Kirkland (Costco), Lily’s, Great Value (Walmart), Hershey’s, Enjoy Life and Guittard.

However, that comes with a caveat: What’s considered relatively safe is just one serving, about ½ ounce, or 14 grams. That’s roughly one tablespoon — about what you’d probably get in one or two chocolate chip cookies. So that does not mean you can safely use or eat these chocolate chips with abandon.

That’s also true for baking with the safer bars: Both Consumer Reports and As You Sow base test results on one ounce. If you want to be safe, do not consume more than one ounce (28 grams), even if you’re consuming one of the “safe” products. That means you cannot safely eat an entire batch of brownies made with the Ghirardelli premium baking bars. But if you make a batch of brownies that uses 6 ounces of chocolate and makes 12 brownies, you can safely eat two brownies.

Use 60% cacao chocolate and 100% cacao chocolate in a 3:1 ratio to get 70% cacao chocolate.

The bars to buy, the ratio to remember

Many of us want to be safe — and to keep our children and grandchildren safe — but don’t have the time or inclination to consult two different websites each time we purchase chocolate for a recipe. Happily, here’s something that’s easy to remember: Choose those two Ghirardelli bars — the 60% cacao premium baking bar and the 100% premium baking bar — and you’ll be making a safe choice.

Use them at a 3 to 1 ratio to arrive at the 70% cacao content dark chocolate that recipes frequently call for. In other words, if a recipe calls for 4 ounces (or 113.5 grams) of 70% cacao chocolate, you can use 3 ounces (84 grams) of 60% and 1 ounce (28 grams) of 100%.

Conveniently, each square of the Ghirardelli 60% and 100% bars weighs .5 ounce (14 grams), so usually you won’t even need a scale.

Cooks Without Borders’ commitment to your safety

At Cooks Without Borders, we care deeply about health (yours and ours), and about the safety of the recipes we publish. In service of that, we examined how the results of the Consumer Reports and As You Sow findings line up with the amounts and types of chocolate we call for in our recipes, and we are in process of updating our existing recipes accordingly — including information about how to make them safe.

We have not published any new recipes that include chocolate since dark chocolate’s lead and cadmium problem came to light in late 2022. Going forward, we will mention the dangers associated with dark chocolate in the headnote of any new recipes or stories that involve the ingredient, and offer suggestions for safer brands when we do write about chocolate.

Looking for a chocolate recipe that’s already been updated? We thought you might enjoy The Mexican Chocolate Situation.

RECIPE: The Mexican Chocolate Situation

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Made in a flash, intensely chocolatey and ludicrously easy, molten chocolate cake deserves a comeback

By Leslie Brenner

There was a time when chocolate molten cakes were so ubiquitous that they became a runny joke — especially because the more it went, the less they were cooked. In went your spoon, and liquid eggy chocolate spilled out all over the plate. Ick.

Over the years, we’ve been subjected to so many mediocre versions of the dessert that we forgot how appealing they were way back when, as they poofed — pillow-like and fabulous — onto the scene. They were like small chocolate dreams — something between a soufflé and a mini-flourless chocolate cake, but preternaturally light, and intensely chocolatey. The middles were molten, but not liquid, just a bit oozy and soft. They were a way to show off great chocolate.

That was back in 1991, in New York City. I was a fledgling food writer there, molten chocolate cakes were everywhere, and they were wonderful.

I remember eating one at JoJo, Jean-George Vongerichten’s restaurant (his first), where he called it Chocolate Valrhona Cake. They’d been invented sometime before that, either by Vongerichten himself or by star pastry Jacques Torres, or maybe by someone in France, depending on whom you talked to. Vongerichten had served them a few years earlier, when he was chef at a restaurant called Lafayette, in the Drake Hotel, but apparently they were too early for their time. (I was still a starving grad student when Vongerichten was at the Drake, so I never made it there.)

In any case, as a society, in the intervening decades, we OD’d on them.

Now, at a time when we need small, easily achieved pleasures, it feels like a great time to rediscover them. A molten chocolate cake may be the biggest dessert bang you can in under a half hour, start to finish, and it’s ludicrously easy. All you need to have on hand is two good chocolate bars, four eggs, a stick of butter, a quarter cup of sugar, a pinch of salt and a couple spoonfuls of flour. If you want to impress a date, a spouse, a friend, a child — or anyone else in your orbit — you can whip this together in a flash and make quite a splash.

I thought about them the other night when my pod clamored after dinner for dessert, something rare and special in our small world. What could Wylie (our 24 year-old son) and his girlfriend Nathalie conjure quickly? I thought about this recipe, verified that we owned two bars of chocolate, and we found a perfect recipe penned by Vongricheten, published in Food & Wine magazine, 22 years ago.

Five seconds later, there Nathalie and Wylie were in the kitchen, melting the chocolate with butter, whipping eggs with egg yolks, folding in the melted chocolate and butter with a spoonful of flour and a pinch of salt, turning the batter into soufflé molds and baking. The cakes spend just 12 minutes in the oven. Maybe leave them in one extra minute, so they’re glossy and molten in the center, but no longer liquid. Pull ‘em out, let ‘em sit for one minute, and unmold.

Anyone can do this. And any of us — event the most well traveled and sophisticated — might well be dazzled all over again.

Happy Valentine’s Day! ❤️

RECIPE: Molten Chocolate Cake

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Luxuriously rich, easy-to-make, flourless Mexican-chocolate cake is blow-them-away fabulous

It all started with a recipe in Michael Solomonov's Zahav: A World of Israeli Cooking. The recipe, for a flourless chocolate cake – in which Solomonov and co-author Steven Cook use almond flour in place of wheat flour – is called "Chocolate-Almond Situation." I was drawn to the recipe because of its unusual name. Why "situation"?

Also, it looked so easy and good I couldn't resist. I melted chocolate, heated the oven, and went for it. 

Rich, luxurious and profoundly chocolatey, with a wonderfully moist, velvet-cream texture, the dessert was a big hit. And it was as easy to make as brownies. Another bonus: It's gluten-free. I posted a snap of it, with a description, on Instagram, tagged Solomonov and Zahav and added, "But still dying to know, Chef, why it's called a 'situation.'" 

"Gorgeous!" came the comment from Zahav. 

"Thank you!" I wrote. "Now why is it called a 'situation'?"

No answer. 

Meanwhile, I had an idea I couldn't get out of my head: Mexican chocolate. Wouldn't it be cool to make this cake using Mexican chocolate instead of regular dark chocolate? 

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Last winter, my friend Michalene and I had enjoyed the most amazing Mexican hot chocolate at El Cardenal, a Mexico City restaurant known for its epic breakfasts. The drink, silky and incredibly rich, was prepared at the table by a waiter who used a molinillo, a traditional wooden chocolate whisk. I had to rush off early to catch my flight home, but Michalene surprised me by sending me a box of Doña Oliva chocolate tablets, which they use and sell at the restaurant. I was stunned to find that I could use a tablet to make a cup of chocolate almost as delicious as El Cardenal's; I've been rationing them ever since.

Since I'm always craving a cup, Mexican chocolate has been on my mind for months – especially since the start of winter. 

Could I maybe use the tablets to make a Mexican-Chocolate Situation? 

Nah...those tablets are too precious.

Meanwhile, I'd seen really cool-looking Taza organic Mexican-style stone-ground chocolate tablets at the supermarket. Maybe I could use those! But when I saw the price – they're $5 per 2.7-ounce tablet on the Taza website – I realized they'd be way too expensive, as we'd need four or five tablets for one cake.

Instead, I tried hunting down the Ibarra Mexican chocolate I grew up with. I didn't find it at my local supermarket, but found and purchased a box of Abuelita, another industrial brand.

What a disappointment: I brought it home and tasted it. It tasted nothing like chocolate. Just like sugar and chemicals. No way was this going into my cake (or yours). 

I was back to the drawing board.

Then, as she often does, Michalene came to the rescue. She suggested using the same high-quality 72% cacao chocolate I first used for the Situation and adding spices and other flavorings you'd find in Mexican chocolate. After all, I already had almonds in the almond flour. She suggested not just cinnamon and vanilla, which is what I'd naturally reach for, but also ancho chile powder and brandy. 

I made a couple other little tweaks to the recipe, for instance, changing the amount of chocolate to equal three 3.5 bars (10.5 ounces) rather than the 11 ounces the original called for. 

I whipped up the chocolate batter, added the ancho chile (just a touch), the cinnamon, the vanilla and brandy, mixed in the almond flour, spread it in a pan and baked.

Eureka! Same wonderful texture and richness, and now it had that dreamy Mexican chocolate flavor.

It was such a hit at dinner that one of my guests would not leave until I wrapped up two slices for him to take home.

You can bake it in a round pan and slice it into wedges, but be sure to make them small, as it is very, very rich. I'd say one 9-inch cake serves 10-12, rather than the 8 you'd expect. For an elegant dinner party, you might want to garnish it with a dollop of whipped cream, or whipped cream mixed with crème fraîche. You know what would be wonderful? Nata, the Mexican-style clotted cream El Cardenal serves at breakfast with the pan dulce known as a concha.

Or you can bake it in a square or pan and cut it into brownie-like bars. Dust them with powdered sugar or not, as you like. Honestly, they were so creamy, chocolatey and rich, they didn't need any adornment. 

Here's the recipe:

As for why it's called a "situation," well, that remains a mystery. Chef Solomonov, care to comment?

Brazilian chocolate cake: Really, it doesn't get any better than this

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I can't remember the first time I tasted the Brazilian chocolate cake from Deborah Madison's The Greens Cookbook, but I do remember who made it: my friend Michalene. (She's also the genius who asked the gobsmacking question about whether I'd tried the magic lacquered chicken technique with duck. Now I have! It is going to work! I am developing it! Stay tuned!) But the cake. It doesn't look like the photo above once it's finished; what's pictured is the bottom half of the cake after I iced it with ganache. It just looks so luscious, I couldn't resist. Wanted you to keep reading. Forgive me. This is what it looks like when it's finished:

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I know, not as glam. I'm not much of a baker; yours will probably be more beautiful. Michalene's always is. Also it is not easy to photograph a bundt cake.

However – and this is a big however – I've made the Brazilian chocolate cake a jillion times, and every single time it has turned out great: moist, with a lovely, fine crumb, rich and magnificently chocolatey. Not too sweet. 

It is, quite simply, the perfect chocolate cake. When you slice it, you can see a stripe of that fabulous glossy bittersweet ganache in the middle, exactly the right amount. It is the little black dress of chocolate cakes: simple, elegant, necessary. It may look a little austere, but oh, baby, it is anything but. A cup of strong coffee in the batter gives it depth and dimension. 

Otherwise, there's nothing unusual about the recipe, which as far as I can tell is foolproof. When I last made it, a few days ago, I purposely fooled with the recipe. I used pastry flour instead of cake flour. I used room-temperature coffee instead of hot coffee. I used a 3.5 ounce bar of chocolate instead of the 3 ounces the cake part of the recipe calls for; same for the ganache. Both cake and ganache were perfect. 

I wish I had a slice right now. Thierry, Wylie and I polished it off pretty quickly. It is not only dreamy as a dessert, it's amazing the next morning (and the one after that) for a decadent breakfast. Wylie was home for spring break when I made it. Though he has never been a big fan of cake, he loves this one.

And you will, too.  Here's the recipe: