Will a cup of boiling water wipe out the baking powder in a cake recipe?

reno_queen

This is a situation where I think I understand what is going on, but my neophyte understanding seems in contradiction to the opinion of an established recipe writer, so I would like to check myself. I was looking at a couple of recipes from one website: one for an "everyday" chocolate cake and one for a chocolate fudge cake . They argue that adding a cup of boiling water during the mixing makes the cocoa "bloom" (which is apparently a good...

Originally asked by Oddthinking on Stack Exchange (cooking) (CC BY-SA 4.0).

uphilltech

Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:

Double acting baking powder activates initially at room temperature and a second time when heated. One web search suggested the second act starts around 40°C, which is above room temperature (I hope!) but well below boiling. In the name of science, I tested a teaspoon of baking powder against both room temperature water and boiling water. The difference was quite dramatic so I think we can safely say that boiling water is effective at turning double acting baking powder into single acting backing powder. (I'll also note that baking soda will start thermal decomposition around 80°C. Boiling water did generate some carbon dioxide there as well.)

Full answer by Kelvin Sherlock: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/135504 (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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