Trader Joe's Chocolate Sauce Brand Is A Must-Buy Over Hershey's

When it comes to chocolate sauce, it's pretty likely that Hershey's is the first brand that pops into your mind. After all, many of us have childhood memories of drizzling Hershey's syrup over ice cream or using it to make chocolate milk. However, despite its cultural significance, Hershey's is not the best chocolate sauce brand out there. Tasting Table ranked 10 chocolate sauce brands — for when you don't want to make your own homemade chocolate sauce, chocolate syrup, or hot fudge — and Hershey's actually placed at number seven. This leads us to the very important question of which brand ranked number one.

The top spot went to the Trader Joe's organic chocolate sauce, Midnight Moo. We found Hershey's sauce to be a bit too runny and observed that it dissolved so quickly that the chocolate flavor couldn't really settle on the taste buds. On the other hand, the TJ's sauce had the opposite qualities and was plenty rich, with a strong cocoa flavor. As for the price, Midnight Moo sauce is only 50 cents more than Hershey's, so it seems well worth it to opt for the Trader Joe's sauce instead of the slightly cheaper — albeit very familiar — Hershey's syrup.

As soon as you take a look at the ingredient lists of the Trader Joe's and Hershey's chocolate sauces, it becomes immediately clear why Midnight Moo tastes richer, with a much more prominent chocolate flavor. For starters, the TJ's sauce has just six ingredients, while Hershey's has 11. And usually, where ingredient lists are concerned, the shorter the better.

Further, when it comes to the sweetening aspect, Trader Joe's Organic Midnight Moo sauce contains just organic cane sugar, while Hershey's contains high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, and sugar, as well as an artificial vanilla flavor. TJ's sauce does also contain organic tapioca syrup, but, unlike corn syrup, it's a natural sweetener that is made from cassava (also known as yuca), a root vegetable. Because tapioca syrup is healthier than sugar, it can easily be considered the better choice for a secondary sweetener in a chocolate sauce. 

In fact, Tasting Table even ranked it among the best corn syrup substitutes. It makes sense that Trader Joe's Organic Midnight Moo sauce would need fewer sweeteners because the cocoa used is organic Dutch-processed rather than natural cocoa powder, which means that it's been processed with an alkalizing agent in order to make it less acidic. It also gives it a smoother taste and a darker color.