The Coffee Product Ina Garten Always Keeps On Hand

Ina Garten's wealth of culinary knowledge is part of what makes her so well loved. For years, she has been a trusted source of information for all kinds of cooking, from pantry essentials to amazing restaurants around the world. When it comes to baking, she has all kinds of neat tricks for creating perfect sweets.

One great hack that Garten has up her sleeve is a simple ingredient that often gets overlooked. She always keeps instant coffee granules handy in her kitchen. It adds richness to sweets, such as icing and glazes, especially those that include chocolate.

Some coffee snobs frown upon the use of instant coffee and will refuse to have it in their kitchen. For Garten, instant coffee plays an important role in bakes such as chocolate cake and deserves a spot in her kitchen always. Combined with her other baking tips, like her favorite chocolate brand for baking, it is suddenly so much easier to make stunning, game-changing bakes.

Ina Garten's instant coffee trick is applicable to so many bakes. Her recipe for black and white cookies in her "Modern Comfort Food" book calls for the use of instant coffee granules when making the chocolate glaze. Just a ½ teaspoon of instant coffee granules helps transform these cookies into a sweet with so much more richness and earthy flavor.

Instant coffee also makes an appearance in Garten's recipe for chocolate cake. She uses instant coffee in her recipe for Beatty's Chocolate Cake in both the cake itself and the chocolate frosting. The chocolate and coffee naturally complement each other, all without being too sweet or too bitter.

Garten does note that she uses specifically instant coffee granules rather than instant espresso powder in her bakes. Although instant espresso powder definitely has its own uses in bakes, Garten says that instant espresso powder has a stronger flavor. Therefore, bakers should decide which type of instant coffee to use based on the flavor they want in their recipes.