Baking help- baking chocolate question!!

[leebee]

My daughter and I are baking a chocolate cake, using my great-grandmother's recipe. The cake calls for two squares of baking chocolate. We bought a bar of Baker's chocolate, but I swear the chocolate isn't the same as when I was a kid; the squares in the bar we bought seem much smaller. I remember from when I was a girl (so back in the 60s) that we'd buy baking chocolate in a box, in which were 'chunks' of chocolate wrapped in glassine paper. Does anyone remember this, and know how much those chunks each weighed? I'd guess 1-2oz each maybe? This is the downfall of this old recipe- it calls for "2 squares of chocolate" and "butter the size of an egg!"

 

[moniqueand2]

I have never seen the baking chocolate box of chunks. But I imagine that a square is 2 oz. I've seen recipes call for say 2 of the 2 oz squares.

 

[wov305]

So I have a very old, like first edition, Betty Crocker cookbook. Measurements were very different but 2squares would have been 4oz based on an old recipe I looked at.

 

[Breezy_Carol]

I think the new Baker's chocolate has the conversion on the side of the box. I just looked and it said "4 baker's pieces=1 oz of chocolate". The Hershey's I have has 1 bar=1 ounce=1 baking chocolate square. I think old ones were one ounce. And I remember the shiny white paper wrapper.

 

[QueenIsabella]

1 square = 2 oz. (You could weigh it if you have a scale). It used to be that the squares could be easily broken in half--heavily scored down the middle. Now, Baker's chocolate is sold in a 4 oz. bar with a bunch of squares. It's scored so each (smaller) square is 1/4 ounce. There's also a conversion where you use cocoa powder and vegetable oil to substitute for unsweetened chocolate, if that helps.

 

[QueenIsabella]

BTW, it's actually STAMPED on the chocolate, that each square is 1/4 ounce. Tough to mess up (although, I probably could).

 

[goofytinkerbell]

1

 

[ronandannette]

My daughter and I are baking a chocolate cake, using my great-grandmother's recipe. The cake calls for two squares of baking chocolate. We bought a bar of Baker's chocolate, but I swear the chocolate isn't the same as when I was a kid; the squares in the bar we bought seem much smaller. I remember from when I was a girl (so back in the 60s) that we'd buy baking chocolate in a box, in which were 'chunks' of chocolate wrapped in glassine paper. Does anyone remember this, and know how much those chunks each weighed? I'd guess 1-2oz each maybe? This is the downfall of this old recipe- it calls for "2 squares of chocolate" and "butter the size of an egg!"

The boxes of Baker's Chocolate used to be 8oz. and the big chunks were 1oz. each, so you want 2oz for your cake. Take whatever size package you have and do the math to divide it into equal 1oz. portions and then use two of them. A spoonful of butter the size of an egg shouldn't be too hard to eyeball unless you overthink what kind of egg we might be talking about.

 

[Snowysmom]

The boxes of Baker's Chocolate were 8oz. and the big chunks were 1oz. each.

T
This is what I remember. I used these alot to make chocolate cream pie. The package of Baker's chocolate that I use now has 8 squares and 2 squares equal an ounce. The entire package is 4 ounces of chocolate. Not sure if that is what you are using.

 

[Kitty 34]

My daughter and I are baking a chocolate cake, using my great-grandmother's recipe. The cake calls for two squares of baking chocolate. We bought a bar of Baker's chocolate, but I swear the chocolate isn't the same as when I was a kid; the squares in the bar we bought seem much smaller. I remember from when I was a girl (so back in the 60s) that we'd buy baking chocolate in a box, in which were 'chunks' of chocolate wrapped in glassine paper. Does anyone remember this, and know how much those chunks each weighed? I'd guess 1-2oz each maybe? This is the downfall of this old recipe- it calls for "2 squares of chocolate" and "butter the size of an egg!"

Leebee, I'm impressed you can remember things like that from your childhood.

Here's a story for ya all....I remember when I was say, preteen (Ronandannette do you have a dinosaur egg in your pic??? ) melting that very unsweet chocolate in a pan and pouring a bunch of sugar in it for my sisters and I to devour. Mom didn't believe in a lot of sweets and obviously was not there in the kitchen at the time. But of course my sisters and I have many cavities to prove my "cooking".

 

[Cannot_Wait_4Disney]

Thanks for letting me know I'm old. I know both of these.

One square of bakers chocolate is equal to 1 dry ounce (measurement of weight, not volume)
Butter the size of an egg is equal to 2 liquid ounces (measurement of volume, not weight)

 

[penn19]

I can’t be the only one that was tempted as a child to sneak a bite

 

[_19disnA]

Chocolate has already been covered with prior comments. Every cooking/baking recipe I have ever seen uses the term 'eggs' to mean those from chickens. Doubt a basic chocolate cake would use anything else. A VERY specialized recipe from a pro chef would specifically say the type of egg, it not from chickens. Eggs vary in size and sometimes you will find a recipe that specifically calls for 'extra large' eggs, but I believe the standard size if not mentioned as something else is generally considered a 'large' egg. I would estimate that 3-4T of butter would approximate the size of 1 egg. Even if that is off by 1T shouldn't make that much of a difference, since most cake recipes have enough flour (and other ingredients like sugar/baking soda/powder plus various liquid ingredients) to make enough batter for 2 of those 9" pans.

For that amount of chocolate & butter, it's not like you are a make a multi-layer wedding cake using pounds of flour.

 

[leebee]

Thanks for all the responses about the chocolate! This is a very old recipe- we always just laid the stick of butter beside the egg and cut off a chunk the size of the egg. I was just thrown by the chocolate part- I'm used to the chocolate being like the chunks on the left in the picture posted by ronandanette (which shows you how long it's been since I've made this recipe) and I knew the "new" bars weren't the same, and the recipe didn't specify ounces, just 2 squares of baking chocolate. By the way, the cake came out great, and instead of frosting DD made cinnamon whipped cream which we dolloped onto each piece of cake- YUM!!

 

[MrsCobraBubbles]

View attachment 638369
The boxes of Baker's Chocolate used to be 8oz. and the big chunks were 1oz. each, so you want 2oz for your cake. Take whatever size package you have and do the math to divide it into equal 1oz. portions and then use two of them. A spoonful of butter the size of an egg shouldn't be too hard to eyeball unless you overthink what kind of egg we might be talking about.
View attachment 638368

thank you for the nostalgia, those are the squares I remembered and I was confused. Years ago I switched over to combining cocoa powder and melted butter to make bakers chocolate, it's been a while since I bought it.

 

[Micca]

Don't have anything to contribute, but wanted to say Hi to all my friends on this thread (You know who you are.)