Customer Reviews

Ghirardelli 60% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate Baking Chips, 11.5 oz.

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

We have enjoyed the 60% as an after dinner snack too for several years. And I think they do well in baking. BUT - as of a month ago,they started to taste different! More like the cheaper store brands made with chocolate liqueur. I noticed a different packaging in some of the stores as well. The look is the same but the packaging material is slightly different. Has Ghiradelli changed its formula? Yuck. Anyone have any insight?

I quite buying any chocolate which doesn't state the cacao percentage on the label some time ago--and have been lobbying the FDA to make such labeling a requirement.

I settled on the Ghirardelli 72% chips a couple years ago as my optimal balance between quality, flavor and cost--chips are always considerably less expensive than bar candy.

I sit with a bag of the 60% cacao bittersweet on my desk as I write. I was forced to switch to this from the 72% when it became impossible to find the 72% locally (on my income, price is always important!)

These are smooth, melt evenly and have a nice chocolate flavor without any significant other notes I can detect (your tastes may vary!)

Americans have a problem with 'bitter' flavors--few US dishes use the bitter taste at all, and most Americans seem to feel that bitter equates to bad. Well, unsweetened cocoa is bitter, and it stays that way until you get to a fairly high level of added sweet.

This means that high cocoa content chocolate is a taste that must be cultivated to some extent--how many coffee drinkers out there truly enjoyed their first cup? (Regular drinkers are addicted...enjoyment may come second to getting their fix.)

My cookie recipe is based upon the Joy Of Cooking recipe, which I double everything EXCEPT the chocolate ships, and add 1/8 tsp red pepper (ground) and 1/4 tsp orange or lemon extract. These chips work quite well (though short of burning them, it's pretty hard to make a chocolate based dessert which I'd not eat...I even carried the infamous 'desert bars' for a few months in my car--slightly chocolate flavored wax is better than no chocolate at all....)

For several months I went through 4-5 bags of these a week as snacks.

The best chocolate is the one you personally like best. After that, it comes down to the recipe it is being used to make.

These are better than average bittersweet chips which can be found in grocery stores at a considerable savings compared with any online vendor I've managed to find.

These are the best grocery store chocolate chips out there. If you are a true chocoholic, I have no doubt that you'll love Ghiradelli's chocolate chips, in all their flavors, especially if you like to nibble on them straight from the bag. Someone mentioned that they had trouble with their baking when using these. All I have to say is this, I've used them and won county fair baking competitions. I don't think they negatively influence my baking; they enhance it! If you think of the difference between milk chocolate chips and semisweet, it's about the same difference between semisweet and bittersweet. (To me, anyway.) :) Enjoy!

Warning: you will never go back to Nestle or any other so called chocolate after getting used to these. Very chocolaty and not too sweet.

Costco carries the very similar Ghirardelli Double Chocolate Bittersweet chips for way less then here. (3.5 lb bag for under [...].) But only during "baking season" (Nov through early January). (Must we adhere to "baking season"?)

The food faddists are saying chocolate is good for you. Enjoy now before it all changes again.

I grew up on Nestlé Toll House Chocolate Chip cookies - my mother's recipe, a slight variation on the Nestlé Toll House recipe, and I thought nothing could ever beat them. But I made ATK's best chocolate chip cookie recipe with these Ghirardeli bittersweet chips and after the first cookie, I thought, what's so special about these? After the second, they WERE suddenly the best. I've made variations to the recipe since then; I make double batches and freeze them and am able to have them every day. It's the chip that makes the cookie and I'll never go back to Nestlé chips for baking chocolate chip cookies. I do prefer dark chocolate to milk chocolate and the bad reviews are comparing semi-sweet to bittersweet so that could be a reason for not liking them.

I have used this great product, and nothing else ever since I first found it in the stores. It is far superior to Toll House Chocolate chips. The person who slammed the bittersweet chips apparently only likes sickly sweet chocolate and has a very closed mind. Please see my comments regarding the negative review.

As others have already stated, Ghirardelli is incredibly substandard. I have used it on more than a couple of occasions and each time had disaster results. Besides the fact that the baked goods do not rise with this garbage the same as they do with regular chocolate the taste is just plain lousy. It is also grossly overpriced. And I don't know about you but I do not have any discretionary money set up to buy garbage.