Here’s Why I Buy All of My Chocolate for Baking at Kroger

All of my favorite desserts and treats feature chocolate, and there’s no better time to share my love of chocolate than during the holidays. Not only do I give homemade chocolate cookies and candy to friends and family, but I also bake a chocolate cake for my December birthday. To pull this off with less stress, I keep a variety of chocolate in my pantry, including cocoa powder, chocolate chips and a variety of chocolate bars to make baking on a whim easy.

Related: What Happens to Your Body When You Eat Chocolate Every Day

For baking bars, I like to keep both bittersweet and unsweetened dark chocolate bars in stock. When it comes to chocolate chips, semisweet dark are my go-to. Milk chocolate is less commonly used for baking, but I still like to keep it on hand. Then there’s cocoa powder, of which I keep both natural and Dutch-processed in my pantry. And I like to have chocolate candy melts around, too, which I use if I want a shiny chocolate coating without the fussy process of tempering.

Related: What's That White Coating on My Chocolate—and Is It Safe to Eat?

All of these types of chocolate are available from different brands at a variety of price points. The flavor and quality of chocolate varies widely from brand to brand. This means that it’s important to give the brand of chocolate you buy more attention than, say, the brand of milk when it comes to baking. You will literally be able to taste the difference. 

How do you know what brand of chocolate to buy? The best piece of advice I’ve received on this topic was to buy chocolate that you enjoy the taste of. It’s the same advice cooks are given when it comes to cooking with wine. Cook with wine you like drinking and bake with chocolate you like eating! Not bad advice, right?

And while it sounds simple, we often consider chocolate for eating to be different from the chocolate we use for baking. They are in separate aisles, after all. But really the only difference between the two is that baking chocolate doesn’t typically include additional ingredients like nuts and flavorings, and it can be sold in larger quantities than chocolate designed for eating out of hand. 

Personally, I’m a fan of Ghirardelli chocolate for baking. I like how it tastes, plus it’s affordable and Ghirardelli has a wide variety of products. And I’ve found that the best place to buy Ghirardelli chocolate is at Kroger. 

My local Kroger carries a full range of groceries and housewares and while I don’t buy all my groceries there, I do pop in weekly—I buy most of my baking supplies, dairy products and dry goods at Kroger. 

And their Ghirardelli chocolate selection can’t be beat. Plus their prices are often lowest. I checked Amazon, Target, Walmart and Safeway and the prices were higher, the selection was limited or both. Kroger is the only store that consistently sells a wide variety of the Ghirardelli products I love to stock my pantry with at a good price. For instance, when I checked prices recently, Ghirardelli's unsweetened chocolate bar at Walmart was more than twice as much as at Kroger! 

Another bonus of buying my chocolate at Kroger is that they also stock vegan and gluten-free chocolate, which I use when I’m baking for people with certain dietary preferences. And since I can just pick those up at Kroger, I don’t have to make a separate trip or place an order online. I definitely don’t mind checking other stores when I happen to be there, because I might get a good deal every now and then, but if I’m going to buy a lot of chocolate, I’m for sure going to Kroger.