Cocoa powder vs cocoa mass

Both are made only from cacao. The difference is fat: cocoa mass keeps all of it, cocoa powder has had most of it pressed out.

Why these get confused

Both are unsweetened and both are pure cacao, so they are often treated as interchangeable. They are not: one is roughly 10–24% fat and the other is around 55%.

Side by side

	Cocoa powder	Cocoa mass (chocolate liquor)	Why it matters
Fat content	Roughly 10–24% cocoa butter.	Around 55% cocoa butter — the bean's natural proportion.	Substituting powder for mass removes a large amount of fat from a recipe. Three tablespoons of cocoa powder plus one of butter or oil approximates an ounce of cocoa mass.
State at room temperature	Dry powder.	Solid, and it melts.	Only cocoa mass can be tempered, moulded or used as a chocolate in its own right.
Flavour intensity per gram	Higher, because the flavour-carrying solids are concentrated.	Lower per gram, diluted by its own fat.	Cocoa powder is the more efficient way to make something taste strongly of chocolate — which is why the darkest cakes use powder rather than melted chocolate.

Choose Cocoa powder when

For cakes and anything where you want deep chocolate flavour without adding fat, and where the recipe's fat comes from elsewhere.

Choose Cocoa mass (chocolate liquor) when

Where the fat is structural — ganache, moulded work, anything that has to set — and where you want the bean's full character rather than the defatted solids alone.

Compared in

Cocoa powderSet against Cocoa mass (chocolate liquor), which readers frequently believe is the same thing.
Chocolate liquorSet against Cocoa powder, which readers frequently believe is the same thing.

Covered in

Chocolate liquorHow it differs from cocoa powder, and why the swap needs fat.

Sources

ChocolateHQ editorial synthesis — ChocolateHQ(citation identity confirmed; passage not re-read)
The Science of Chocolate — Royal Society of Chemistry(citation identity confirmed; passage not re-read)