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Premelted Chocolate

When we began to see packets of premelted unsweetened chocolate on the shelves of the grocery store, we wondered if this product could be used interchangeably with melted and cooled chocolate. Here’s what we discovered.

When we began to see packets of premelted unsweetened chocolate on the shelves of the grocery store, we wondered if this product could be used interchangeably with melted and cooled chocolate. Here’s what we discovered.

Nestlé's Choco Bake Pre-Melted Unsweetened Chocolate Flavor looks like melted chocolate, but it's actually an emulsion of cocoa powder and vegetable oils. Each box contains eight 1-ounce packets of liquid chocolate product that can be directly substituted for each ounce of bar chocolate; each packet can also be substituted for 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder plus 1 tablespoon of shortening or oil.

To see how the product stacked up to real melted chocolate and cocoa powder, we made melted chocolate-based brownies and a cocoa-based chocolate cake. For the brownies, the bar chocolate produced "true chocolate flavor," while the Choco Bake was "a little sweet," with marginally less chocolate flavor. Tasters liked the "superfudgy" texture of the Choco Bake brownies, a result of the extra oil in the product. The cake yielded similar results. The cocoa version had deeper chocolate flavor, but the cake made with Choco Bake was praised for being "very moist." Our conclusion: Nestlé's Choco Bake is an acceptable substitute for melted chocolate, especially if you're willing to trade some flavor intensity for added moistness and convenience.

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