Baking Chocolate Review

Introduction to Baking Chocolate

We located several reviews that identify the best dark chocolate and chocolate chips for cooking and baking, covered in this report. If you're looking for opinions on boxed candy, please see our companion report on chocolate.

Cook's Illustrated provides the most recent and best dark chocolate review. Cook's is the only publication that tests baking chocolate three ways: by baking brownies with it, by melting it down for chocolate pots de crème and by eating it plain. Editors sample 12 brands and varieties of chocolate, offering a helpful discussion of how sourcing, roasting and processing affect the taste of the finished chocolate. Although their top-rated chocolate contained the least amount of fat, editors at Cook's Illustrated say that no one ingredient is responsible for the quality of a chocolate bar. Rather it's the combination of cocoa solids, cocoa butter and sugar that determines how the finished chocolate will taste. Cook's also has great older reviews of unsweetened chocolate and chocolate chips.

Consumer Reports tests 15 chocolate bars, but some of the bars contain added ingredients such as cocoa nibs, and each bar is only consumed in one form: raw. We wish the magazine had tasted each chocolate in desserts, since other experts say that performance in baking can vary. Prevention magazine selects eight of its favorite chocolate bars, some of which contain cranberries, almonds and even rosehips -- an ingredient you don't want in a brownie or chocolate sauce.

We also read the results of a Food & Wine chefs' poll and a brownie bake-off at SeriousEats.com, which pitted a fancy semisweet chocolate against a cheap mass-market bar. A review conducted by National Public Radio includes a few bars in its taste test of more than 25 chocolate products, although much of the report is devoted to Valentine's confections. Taste testers at the L.A. Times tried 23 dark-chocolate bars raw, but didn't use any of the bars in baking. Finally, we read detailed reviews of individual, unflavored chocolate bars from pastry professionals and chocolate lovers at Seventypercent.com, a site for enthusiasts that bans chocolates containing artificial flavors and additives. This is a particularly good place to find chocolate for nibbling, but it's less helpful where baking chocolate is concerned.

Expert reviewers downgrade chocolate for lacking flavor, having a chalky or gritty texture, or for having an unpleasant aftertaste. In tests, Newman's Own Organic Sweet Dark Chocolate (*Est. $3.25 for 2.8 ounces) often earns poor marks for grittiness and weak flavor. Cook's Illustrated calls Hershey's baking bar "dull" and Nestlé Chocolatier Premium Baking Chocolate Bittersweet (*est. $4 for 8 ounces) "dry" and "grainy." Testers picked out "off" flavors in brownies made with the Nestlé bar. Supermarket staple Baker's (*est. $2 for 8 ounces) unsweetened chocolate bar has little flavor and a mealy texture, according to Cook's Illustrated's review panel. Its bittersweet baking bar, too, is deemed chalky. Although it can be baked into brownies and cakes with acceptable results, Baker's Bittersweet should not be eaten plain.

Reviewers say that, like unsweetened chocolate, most chocolate chips are of lower quality than bar chocolate. Too often, they are cloyingly sweet or offensively waxy, and in tests, they sometimes melt into sludgy heaps. This is because they contain less cocoa butter, which is expensive, and more sugar. Tasters panned Hershey's Semi-Sweet (*est. $2.25 for a 12-ounce bag) and Special Dark (*est. $2.25 for a 12-ounce bag) for their immoderate sweetness and bland flavor. Tasters complained that Baker's chocolate chips (*est. $2.50 for a 12-ounce bag) were like "sugar cubes with a chalky shortening quality." Although Mrs. Fields stakes its reputation on its chocolate chip cookies, testers downgraded its chocolate chips (*est. $3 for a 12-ounce bag) for having an oddly nutty flavor and too much sugar. Guittard Classic Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips (*est. $2.80 for 12 ounces) and even Nestlé Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chunks (*Est. $2.50 for 11.5 ounces) score better in chocolate-chip reviews.