Best chocolate to use when baking?

CookieMonster.x · 11-07-2010 8:45pm #1

What's the best chocolate to use for baking? I'm looking for a really nice chocolate (not dairy milk though) for chocolate biscuit cake, cookies and muffins in particular. I have used wonderbar dark chocolate for muffins and they turned out alright, but is there any other really nice chocolate I can use? I used wonderbar dark chocolate for a different type of cookie before and they weren't nice and I used dairy milk I think for biscuit cake and it was really really horrible.
Thanks in advance!

Acoshla · 11-07-2010 9:09pm

Don't use Wonderbar or Dairy Milk in baking, Dairy Milk was never meant for baking with, it has a very low amount of cocoa solids, good for eating, not for cooking. Wonderbar is, well, crap, in my opinion, I only use it to stick candles to cake boards.

Use chocolate with 60-75% Cocoa Solids for "normal" chocolate things, by that I mean things that don't require extraordinarily dark chocolate. The best value bars of this are in Lidl, Aldi, sometimes Tesco.

I use this chocolate mixed with some lighter milk chocolate for biscuit cake. Get good quality chocolate chips for cookies etc.

Magic Monkey · 11-07-2010 10:28pm

Wonderbar is chocolate covering. The difference between this and proper chocolate is that the cocoa butter in proper chocolate is replaced with a different type of fat, usually a vegetable oil. This affects the taste, texture, and the bake. If you want proper chocolate taste, avoid Wonderbar.

I'd also recommend not using Dairy Milk in baking, as it's designed to be eaten as a confection, not a baking ingredient.

As Spadina said, Lidl etc. do good chocolates you can use. 50-70% is the non-dark/bitter range. Chopped up as inclusions in cookies and muffins they will work fine. For CBC couverture is better, it's chocolate with added cocoa butter, which melts better and works more effectively this way. You can get milk chocolate couverture in Thorntons.

nice1franko · 11-07-2010 10:34pm

Ikea sell very good quality choc very cheaply.

65c for a 100g bar (60% cocoa solids). They do dark, milk and a nutty one. Very good choc imo.

I usually pick up a dozen or two whenever I'm up.

Acoshla · 11-07-2010 11:48pm

Magic Monkey wrote: »

Wonderbar is chocolate covering. The difference between this and proper chocolate is that the cocoa butter in proper chocolate is replaced with a different type of fat, usually a vegetable oil. This affects the taste, texture, and the bake. If you want proper chocolate taste, avoid Wonderbar.

I'd also recommend not using Dairy Milk in baking, as it's designed to be eaten as a confection, not a baking ingredient.

As Spadina said, Lidl etc. do good chocolates you can use. 50-70% is the non-dark/bitter range. Chopped up as inclusions in cookies and muffins they will work fine. For CBC couverture is better, it's chocolate with added cocoa butter, which melts better and works more effectively this way. You can get milk chocolate couverture in Thorntons.

Magic Monkey you always explain things so well and give such good advice.

nice1franko wrote: »

Ikea sell very good quality choc very cheaply.

65c for a 100g bar (60% cocoa solids). They do dark, milk and a nutty one. Very good choc imo.

I usually pick up a dozen or two whenever I'm up.

Dammit I wish I'd known that when I was there last week!

moonflower · 12-07-2010 12:30am

I like the big bars of Aldi chocolate, the 89cent ones. They come in Milk and Plain, the milk one is nice instead of cocolate chips in brownies and cookies (chop it up) and the plain one is good for baking where darker chocolate is required. They also do Moser Roth chocolate in 85% cocoa which is perfect for mousses and melty middle puddings and such where you want a very rich taste.