6 Grocery Store Baking Chocolates, Ranked Worst To Best

Every baker knows the importance of working with high-quality ingredients. Even if you're making chocolate chip cookies, which are an amalgamation of butter, flour, sugar, and, of course, the chocolate, every ingredient still has to pull its own weight and contribute to the overall success of the recipe. Baked goods are only as strong as their weakest link — so don't let that be your baking chocolate. 

If you find yourself baking a lot of chocolate desserts, including brownies, mousses, and more, you need to invest in a quality baking chocolate. It's important to note that baking chocolate is not the same thing as snacking chocolate; the former contains a higher percentage of cocoa solids than the cheap candy bars you'll find at the convenience store. By proxy, baking chocolate also often contains less sugar and comes without the caramel, nuts, and other additives you'd find in a Snickers. There are several different forms of baking chocolate, including blocks and chips, that have different sweetness levels and varying cacao content. Your grocery store selection will likely include milk and semi-sweet chocolate as well as bittersweet and dark varieties.

In an effort to survey the range of different baking chocolates available at most grocery stores, I tested and ranked several different semi-sweet bar and chip brands. I assessed each chocolate variety on its mouthfeel and flavor as well as how smoothly it melted down after a short stint in the microwave. 

Lily's was a brand that I had sampled in the past, and honestly, hadn't thought very favorably of. While its other, no-sugar-added chocolate products have a smooth texture that rivals other brands that are made with sugar, I thought it would be interesting to see how its semi-sweet bar, with 45% cacao, would square up to some of the other offerings on this list that are made with plain ol' sugar. Besides this bar, Lily's makes a range of other baking chocolates, including dark chocolate and white chocolate bars, as well as white, dark, semi-sweet chips. You may also want to try experimenting with some of its more unique baking chip flavors, including chocolate pumpkin spice, chocolate cinnamon, and hot cocoa with marshmallow — though why you would ever want to is beyond me. 

This semi-sweet bar is sweetened with stevia extract and erythritol (a sugar alcohol). The bar itself smells super sweet, and the flavor at first bite draws you in. It's almost like there's something nutty in this chocolate, like a hazelnut undercurrent, that pulls you in even further. But then, that nutty flavor dissipates into the most artificial sweetener-based flavor that I've ever tasted in a chocolate bar. It's metallic, almost iron-y, and it persists long after you finish eating this bar. 

I found that this baking bar melted much better than the Great Value brand did, but I noticed an issue very quickly with it: It solidified in record time. By the time that I walked to my computer and walked back to the bowl, I noticed that it had formed a thick, dense coating on the bottom of the dish. When I managed to dig up a scoop, I found that same, oppressive artificial sweetener flavor. 

I'm always suspicious of brands that are keto-friendly and sugar-free because, historically, they don't taste as delicious as products made with all the sugar and all of the normal, non-keto ingredients (I'm looking at you, blueberry muffin mixes that placed low in my ranking). But, Bake Believe's impressive lineup of baking products, from the semi-sweet chips in this ranking to its milk and dark chocolate chip offerings, makes it seem like the brand has it figured out. However, after I sampled this product, I found that this actually couldn't be further from the truth.

These small chips, while they had less of a powdery appearance than the Ghirardelli chips that I sampled, had both an aroma and a flavor that screamed "coconut." It was so oppressively coconut-flavored that I thought I was diving straight into a bowl of coconut oil. This really skewed the initial profile of the chips, though I found that the oppressiveness of these chips subsided after a couple of bites. It was replaced by a chocolatey flavor but one that would also line up with the profile of stevia and sugar alcohols. This taste persisted even in the melted chocolate. Moreover, I found that these chips were also harder to melt down into a sauce than other brands like Ghirardelli and even the not-so-favorable Endangered Species brand. 

If you were melting down this sugar-free chip to use as a topping for a coconut cream pie, you wouldn't be able to tell that it's super coconut-flavored. But it's not one that you would want to add to a vanilla cookie, nor would it be one you'd want to use for any sort of sauce.

The Great Value semi-sweet baking bar was only a few cents cheaper than the name-brand Baker's bar, so it technically classifies as a "great value." But I've worked with enough Great Value brand products to know that they're not always a home run. This semi-sweet bar is made with milk, though unlike the other bars on this list, it does not specify how much cacao it is made with. The private label also offers two other options, an unsweetened chocolate bar and a white chocolate bar. 

I can't really comment much on the flavor of this chocolate simply because there was very little. When I bit into the solid bar, there was no discernible chocolatiness, nor was there really any sweetness. Any chocolate notes that were in this bar were quite chalky and underwhelming. The bar was far thinner and easier to bite through than the Baker's bar, which made it almost resemble a snacking chocolate bar that you'd find in the sweets aisle of the grocery store. It was clear that the brand didn't use high-quality chocolate for this bar, otherwise I would have been able to taste it. 

I will say that this bar chocolate melted better than the Bake Believe chips, but it was far thinner than Ghirardelli or any of the other, more premium brands I sampled. While I was glad that this Great Value bar didn't have the same unpleasant aftertaste as the lower-ranked brands, I would have liked to see more by the way of quality chocolate flavor. I wouldn't recommend adding it to any sort of baked good that's dependent on a strong chocolate flavor, like fudgy brownies, nor would I recommend drizzling it on fruit — I highly doubt it would end up sticking anyway. 

I've tried Endangered Species chocolates before, so I can vouch for the quality of the chocolate this brand uses. However, its oat milk premium baking chips are a big swing — and an even bigger miss. The little pieces of chocolate are not chips, but discs — almost like candy melting wafers. It would be a big stretch to include them in a chocolate chip cookie without someone noticing and raising some concern. Moreover, these chips tasted like I ate a fistful of rolled oats straight from the bulk section of the grocery store. It's not necessarily a dry bite, but it has that dusty, oatmeal-like flavor that makes it really unpleasant to eat — though, it wasn't as abhorrent as the low-sugar chocolate brands in this review. Despite containing 55% cacao, the chocolate flavor really took a backseat here and let the oat milk base drive the bus. It's a tragedy, as I find that oat milk, more often than not, has a more neutral flavor than other milk substitutes. 

I was surprised to see how well it melted. But that annoying oatmeal flavor persisted and really took over any chocolate notes that were competing for my attention. I also found that this chocolate had a little bit of a gritty and coarse mouthfeel, compared to the smoother melt from Ghirardelli. 

This is a fine chocolate, but I would be hard-pressed to say that it would be an excellent baking chocolate. You probably wouldn't be able to tell that the chocolate tastes so off if it were in a cookie or a brownie, but it might stick out more if it was used in a ganache or drizzled on something. Moreover, Baker's was able to concoct a great chocolate bar without milk, so maybe Endangered Species should just nix the oat milk altogether in favor of a higher-quality chocolate. 

Baker's, a Kraft-Heinz brand, was the brand I was most familiar with going into this ranking. I've used it when I made chocolate chunk cookies or when I was looking to switch up my usual chocolate chip routine. Being dairy-free, this bar was a go-to for baking when I didn't want to spend extra on a specialty vegan chocolate bar (see the ranking for my favorite). It's one of the most affordable and widely available baking bars on the market, and it comes in several different varieties, including white, German sweet (48% cacao), bittersweet, and the semi-sweet bar that I sampled with 56% cacao. 

Right off the bat, this Baker's semi-sweet chocolate baking bar is thoughtfully designed. It has smaller bars than many other brands, and the little rectangles themselves are imprinted with the ¼ ounce measurement. Plus, its density also allows you to easily grate this chocolate into a bowl for easier melting. I will say, though, that biting into it was quite difficult; my front teeth had to do some work before I was able to tear off a piece. 

The flavor of this bar was not as rich as Ghirardelli's, which ultimately cost it the top spot in this ranking. However, I felt that it had a better balance of sugar than the sweeter, Ghirardelli chips. The chocolate flavor was deeper and more pronounced, though it wasn't bitter or too distracting. After this bar was melted, it retained the same characteristics. I also found that, unlike the no-sugar-added Lily's bar, I didn't need to do a ton of stirring until it turned into a perfect, melted pool. This bar would be best when you want that hard-hitting, heavy chocolate flavor, like in a ganache. However, its thick mouthfeel and slightly chalky taste (which I suspect is because it's made without milk), nudged it out of the top spot. 

I grew up on Ghirardellii's semi-sweet baking chocolate chips — mainly because my mom refused to have any other brands in the house. I was always told that the quality of Ghirardelli's brand was unmatched. And after trying its semi-sweet baking chips, I can confidently say that these are still the absolute best. 

The biggest thing that I think Ghirardelli got right with its chips was the flavor. You could tell the flavor was high-quality chocolate — not like the cheap Hershey's bar in the candy section or Nestlé Toll House chocolate chips sold in the store. Rather, it skirts a thin line between being super rich while also balancing sweetness. Despite being a baking chocolate, this chocolate really does live up to that "sweet" title. However, I didn't find these chips to be overwhelmingly cloying, which is something that I was thankful for. Although this is clearly a dessert chocolate, its sugariness is still approachable and something that a good baker could work with. 

However, that wasn't Ghirardelli's only win. The meltability of these chips was unmatched. Rather than forming a chocolatey mass like Bake Believe's chips, these seamlessly and easily melted into the others — like the chip itself had been purpose-built for melting. I would use these chips for chocolate-covered strawberries because they can easily melt down and flavor whatever they're coating with a sublime, sweet bliss. There are several reasons why these baking chips are worthy of the top title — and you'd see for it for yourself if you bought a bag.

There are several different criteria that I used to rank these baking chocolates. The first thing that I did was to taste the chocolate straight from the package. Although its intended use is in recipes, rather than eating out of hand, I wanted to see whether the chocolate had a balance of high-quality ingredients, sweetness, and milkiness. I also looked for a creamy texture, as any textural issues in the chocolate will be conveyed into the recipe it's used in. After I had sampled each bar, I melted it down in the microwave in 15-second intervals until it was completely soft. After giving it a quick stir, I assessed how well the chocolate melted and if it had the perfect richness to it that could make it a drizzling chocolate as well as a baking one. 

These baking chocolates, both bars and chips, are available at retailers across the country and online. I picked up all of the brands that I could find from grocery stores in southern Rhode Island, so the selection and price may vary depending on where you're buying them.