Baking Chocolate

part of: Cacao

Baking chocolate is chocolate in its most unadorned form — pure cocoa mass (also called cocoa liquor) set into blocks or squares with no added sugar, milk, or flavouring. It has an intensely bitter, deeply chocolatey taste that’s too strong to eat on its own but delivers powerful chocolate flavour when combined with sugar in baked goods.

It’s a key ingredient in brownies, chocolate cakes, ganache, and rich chocolate sauces, where the baker controls the sweetness separately. Because it contains both cocoa solids and cocoa butter in their natural proportions, it melts smoothly and gives baked goods a dense, fudgy quality that cocoa powder alone can’t replicate.

Baking chocolate is sold in individually wrapped squares or as a single block. It’s distinct from dark eating chocolate, which contains added sugar, and from compound cooking chocolate, which replaces cocoa butter with vegetable fat.

Farmed
photograph to come — from twenty years of markets, farms and kitchens

How it's made

Baking chocolate starts with cacao beans that are fermented after harvest, then dried, roasted, and cracked to remove the shells, leaving cacao nibs. The nibs are ground between heavy rollers or stones, generating enough heat to liquefy the cocoa butter within and producing a smooth, thick paste called cocoa liquor or cocoa mass. This liquid is poured into moulds — typically scored into squares for easy portioning — and cooled until solid. No sugar, milk, or other ingredients are added.

Nutrition (per 100g)

Energy 641kcal
Protein 14.3g
Carbs 11.8g
Fat 52.3g
Fibre 16.6g Sugar 0.9g
Mass Distribution

1 cup, grated is about 132 g — roughly 850 kcal of this.

What it costs the planet (per kilo)

Carbon 115.6kg
Freshwater 1350.6L
Land 173.1m²

Where it comes from

Made from
Cacao, beans

In the kitchen

Used as

baking chocolate base

Goes well with
vanilla butter sugar cream coffee cherry
Classic dishes
  • Brownies
  • Chocolate cake
  • Chocolate ganache
  • Flourless chocolate torte

Keeping one at home? Track yours in your cubud →

Where this data comes from

Nutrition data from

USDA

How it was calculated

SR Legacy

Full credits, licences, and methods: the sources page →

Where to next

made fromCacao, beans goes well withvanilla goes well withbutter goes well withsugar goes well withcoffee goes well withcherry shares a sourceCacao Beans & Nibs shares a sourceChocolate Beverages shares a sourceChocolate Confectionery & Bars shares a sourceChocolate Puddings & Desserts shares a sourceChocolate Syrups & Sauces shares a sourceCocoa Butter shares a sourceCocoa Powder shares a sourceDark Chocolate
✎ Spotted something wrong? Suggest a correction

Checking who you are...