Trader Joe's Pound Plus Dark Chocolate

As much as I love fall, I have to say it's a bit confusing to see leaves falling steadily from my window but step outside only to be blasted by 85 degree heat.  Fall indicates that time where many of us trade in our barbecues for our ovens and slow cookers, but the occasional heat wave sort of discourages that. Not that it's slowed me down, much. I'd bake everyday if I had the time, patience, endless cupboard of ingredients, and masses of people to eat the stuff. Which occasionally happens. And when you desire to bake up a storm, I'd suggest stocking up a two pounds plus of imported chocolate. 

I realize Costco has a delicious Ghirardelli brownie mix that produces great results. I'm not knocking boxed brownie mix - a good mix goes a long way and gets the job done. However, over the years I've gradually come to appreciate the made-from-scratch stuff. And the best of the made-from-scratch? Any brownie made from real chocolate. It just can't be beat. Fortunately, TJ's makes a few of these pound plus chocolate bar varieties, if you can call it a bar weighing over 1 pound a "bar." There's milk chocolate, milk chocolate with almonds, and a semisweet pound plus bar, but I'm partial to dark chocolate. 

Unfortunately, I had a hard time in the store deciding which dark chocolate bar was darker, so I picked both of them up. This 72% cacao dark chocolate bar doesn't have listed on the back how much cacao is in it, so is it safe to assume that it is indeed 72%?

This "dark chocolate bar" has a minimum of 54%, which makes it seem like this one is lighter than the red label 72% one. It also seemed to line up with the way the products were displayed at that particular TJ store - the pound pluses were lined up from lightest chocolate to darkest. 

So recently, I experimented with a new brownie recipe from Tartine, which called for ONE POUND of chocolate. ONE POUND people. That sounds obscene. Fortunately, because these are pound plus bars, it didn't require the entire bar. Just most of it. Yikes. 

I'm not the most experienced baker. I don't shell out on ridiculous quality chocolate for my bakes. But what I did notice about this chocolate - it melts nicely, it definitely is of higher quality than a Hershey bar (after all hopefully imported Belgian chocolates would be better), and the cocoa flavor is on point. Above, I used the dark chocolate to make double chocolate cookies, which turned out to have a very brownie-esque flavor. 

Probably my favorite part about these pound plus chocolates is the quality for price value. The baking chocolate I normally pick up from the supermarket is about $2.29 per 4 oz (WHEN ON SALE PEOPLE). That's basically $9 per pound of chocolate. But these pound plus bars are $4.99 each. WHAT A DEAL. 

"But what about Costco where the cost is low?" I haven't looked y'all. If they happen to carry a high quality baking chocolate at less than $5 per pound, maybe I'll recant my statement that this is the best quality baking chocolate at the best price. But in the mean time, this chocolate supports some of my favorite adages to live by - the only thing I like more than spending money is saving it. 

TL;DR: Trader Joe's Pound Plus Dark Chocolate. Quality Belgian chocolate for baking, eating, or whatever at a hard-to-beat price. 9 out of 10.