Using ordinary chocolate vs cooking chocolate in baking

littlemoney

I am going to try some baking this winter. I saw a recipe which specified cooking chocolate. The supermarket basic chocolate is much cheaper than cooking chocolate. Are the two types of chocolate interchangeable?

Brambling

Cooking chocolate used to be awful stuff but now days I think the difference to cooking chocolate and 'normal' chocolate is the amount of sugar added.  I usually buy 'normal' plain chocolate

ampersand

30p MrT blocks have been tried and tested for years by me - dark, milk, and white.
All are fine.
#
On the other hand, to eat - the only real choc. must be at least 70% cocoa solids. 
Good luck, littlemoney :-)

peb

I use either Milka (when fifty pence a block of 100gms  at Morrisons or Lidl own. Thing is cooking chocolate used to be terrible (chocolate flavour rather than chocolate) but when our local coop closed down I stocked up on supercook which was 70%.

If you have a recipe to follow I suppose it depends on what the chocolate is for iyswim, I'd just go with whatever I had or could acquire inexpensively.

C_J

I use the Aldi basic chocolate at around 30p per 100g bar, and can confirm that the milk, plain and white versions are all absolutely fine for cooking.

MrsStepford

Cooking chocolate may have less sugar. If you use eating chocolate, you get more sugar and less chocolate. I recommend Menier https://www.menier.co.uk/

baggins11

Same as ampersand we use the mr t molly basic brand at 30p. I only use the dark as even that one is full of sugar but I always reduce the sugar in recipes by half so its not too sweet.

I am a dark chocolate snob for eating but chopped into oat cookies or similar mollys is just fine.

Apintplease

Another bog standard basics range chocolate for cooking here, esp when Im baking for the grandkids

Lidl have cooking chocolate which must be a good price as I have quite a bit of it in stock

SootySweep1

Hi
Another vote for using basic chocolate for cooking.
However if you want chocolate chips then I believe the bags of chocolate chips contain something that stops them melting when you cook the cookie, cake etc and stay as chocolate chips.
Jen

3secondmemory

ampersand said:

30p MrT blocks have been tried and tested for years by me - dark, milk, and white.
All are fine.
#
On the other hand, to eat - the only real choc. must be at least 70% cocoa solids. 
Good luck, littlemoney :-)

My son-in-law always buys me the green and Blacks taster box but anything over 70% I can’t eat so I’ll save that for desserts and cocoa. 

If baking for children, I tend to use Lidl 😃

tain

Cooking chocolate has been engineered differently to normal chocolate, so it depends on what you need it for.

Normal milk chocolate is formulated to have a nice mouthfeel and melting point right out of the packet, so is good for recipes where it isn't going to be melted. Normal milk chocolate can have a slightly unpleasant mouthfeel when it re-solidifies after it has been melted. 

Cooking variety milk chocolate is made to melt easily and reform to a pleasant smooth texture. Nothing wrong with using it in situations where it's not going to be melted, but it is an inferior product to standard chocolate bars. 

If using dark chocolate, ignore 'cooking' varieties and just go with a high cocoa solid content.