Bake Like a Pro: The Only Guide You Actually Need to Choose Chocolate for Baking

Not all 70% dark chocolate is the same.

This isn’t a debate — it’s food chemistry. And yet every grocery shelf, food blog, and recipe comment section would have you believe otherwise.

Two chocolates can share a cacao percentage and still behave like estranged cousins at a family reunion. One melts beautifully and delivers the clean snap and nuanced flavor of actual craftsmanship. The other turns grainy, burns too fast, and tastes faintly of resignation.

The number — 60%, 70%, even 85% — tells you very little. It includes cocoa solids, yes, but also cocoa butter, which is fat. More fat? Smoother melt. Less fat? Dry texture, quick temper tantrums, and a duller flavor. And of course, percentages tell you nothing about the origin, roast, particle size, or whether the person making it gives a damn.

And yet, recipe after recipe calls for “good dark chocolate,” as if that clears things up. As if you didn’t stand in the baking aisle last week staring at six brands of 70% bars with rising existential panic.

So let’s fix that. This isn’t a deep dive for the bean-to-bar obsessives (though they’re welcome). It’s a guide for home bakers, pastry pros, and anyone tired of wasting butter on subpar chocolate. We’ll walk through cocoa percentages, couverture vs. compound, the cocoa powder wars, and how to pick the right chocolate for what you’re actually baking.

You don’t need to become a chocolate snob.
But you do need to stop baking with whatever was on sale next to the marshmallows.

Couverture vs. Compound: Chocolate’s Great Identity Crisis

There are two types of people in this world: those who bake with couverture, and those who use compound chocolate and then wonder why everything tastes like a scented candle.

Let’s get something out of the way: compound chocolate is not chocolate. It is, legally speaking, a collection of brown-colored ingredients that gestures vaguely toward the idea of chocolate, the way a bag of Froot Loops nods at fruit. Instead of cocoa butter — the smooth, rich fat that gives real chocolate its velvety melt — compound chocolate relies on cheaper oils like palm kernel or vegetable oil. The result is a product that melts poorly, tastes flat, and behaves in the oven like it was designed by someone who hates joy.

You use compound chocolate when you need something to look like chocolate but not act like it. Candy melts. Coating wafers. Mystery shell coatings on budget cake pops. It’s popular in commercial kitchens where cost and appearance trump taste — a category in which you, presumably, do not want to live.

It is, however, the right choice if you are dipping frozen treats in chocolate, namely, because it doesn’t have as much of an issue with flaking all over the place when you bite into it.

Couverture, on the other hand, is what actual pastry chefs and serious bakers reach for. It's high in cocoa butter, finely ground, and designed to melt smoothly, set with a glossy snap, and taste like someone cared. Valrhona. Callebaut. Republica del Cacao. You’ve seen the names. These are the bars and feves that cost more for a reason — because they work, and because they taste like chocolate’s final form.

Tempering? Mandatory. Truffles? Creamier. Ganache? More stable. It's not a flex. It's a tool.

If you’re coating something, filling something, or folding chocolate into something where the flavor and texture matter (and let’s be honest, when do they not?), use couverture. If you’re dipping treats for Instagram… sure, go compound. But don’t let it touch your brownie batter.

Cocoa Powder: Fat, pH, and the Bitter Truth

If your baked goods are falling flat or your ice cream base just split into a chalky mess, it’s time to stop blaming the recipe and start blaming your cocoa powder. Because no, all cocoa powders are not the same — and yes, the wrong one can absolutely sabotage your dessert before you even preheat the oven.

Two things matter: how the cocoa was processed, and how much fat it still contains. Natural cocoa powder is acidic. It’s sharper in flavor, lighter in color, and chemically active — which means it reacts with baking soda to help your cake rise. Dutch-processed cocoa has been treated with an alkaline solution to neutralize that acidity. It’s darker, smoother, and chemically neutral, which means you’ll need baking powder (or leaven with egg whites) if you want anything to happen besides existential disappointment in a 9-inch round.

Fat content is the other half of the equation — and the part most people ignore. Low-fat cocoa powder (which is what most American brands quietly sell) contains around 10–12% cocoa butter. It’s fine. It gets the job done. But it also dries out your batter faster, brings less depth to the party, and won’t carry flavor nearly as well. High-fat cocoa, on the other hand — around 20–24% cocoa butter — gives you better texture, richer mouthfeel, and actual chocolate flavor that survives baking. It makes cakes richer, brownies chewier, and frosting taste like something you’d be proud to serve other people.

Which brings us, inevitably, to Valrhona. Their cocoa powder is both Dutch-processed and high-fat, clocking in around 21% cocoa butter. It blends cleanly, tastes like you know what you’re doing, and performs beautifully in recipes that don’t rely on baking soda for rise. It’s also the kind of ingredient that instantly upgrades anything it touches — assuming you’re not using it in a recipe that depends on acidity.

And if you’re making ice cream? This is where things get tricky. High-fat cocoa is glorious in ganache, but can throw your custard base completely off balance if you’re not careful. Too much fat in the cocoa, layered on top of cream and egg yolks, can cause the emulsion to break or the texture to turn gritty. The result is a frozen dessert that tastes like defeat. You need to choose the cocoa your base is built for — not the one you happen to have in the cupboard.

And then there’s black cocoa. The final stage in the Dutch-process journey, black cocoa has been fully alkalized — stripped of nearly all acidity and, frankly, most of its personality. It’s smooth, inky, and leans more toward Oreo than actual chocolate. That’s because the heavy alkalization flattens the fruitier, brighter notes and leaves behind a deep, dry bitterness that’s more about color and drama than flavor complexity. It contains virtually no fat (depending on the brand), which means it’s terrible as a standalone cocoa but excellent as an accent — perfect for coloring cookies jet black or adding a toasty edge to something richer. Think of it like squid ink: a little goes a long way, and if you use too much, you’ll just taste darkness and regret.

In short, chocolate isn’t just one ingredient — it’s an entire category of chemistry that most people screw up by treating it like it's interchangeable. Cocoa percentages don’t tell you the whole story. Couverture and compound chocolate aren’t even playing the same sport. And cocoa powder? It’s a minefield of fat content and pH that will happily ruin your dessert and leave you blaming the eggs. If your ganache split, your cake collapsed, or your cookies came out tasting like hot dust, it wasn’t your fault — but it probably was your chocolate.