Chocolate chips
Chocolate formulated to NOT melt. Lower cocoa butter and often added stabilisers, so the pieces hold their shape through a bake — which makes them the wrong choice whenever the chocolate should disappear.
What it is
A chocolate chip is engineered against the thing chocolate is usually prized for. Reduced cocoa butter and, in many products, added stabilisers give it a higher effective melting point and enough structure to survive an oven with its shape intact.
That is a deliberate design and a good one for cookies, where distinct pockets of chocolate are the point. It is the wrong material for anything that wants the chocolate to melt into the mixture — a ganache made with chips is grainy, a chip-based coating sets badly, and a brownie built on chips has lumps where it should have depth.
The rule that follows is simple and is the single most useful thing on this page: chips where you want pieces, chopped bar where you want the chocolate to melt.
- Category kind
- A manufacturing grade — this describes how it behaves, not what it is
- Legal status
- Industry convention, not a legal definition
- Typical range on shelves
- 40–70%, most commonly around 55%
- Also called
- chocolate morsels, choc chips, baking chips
- Flavour families
- sweet, roasted
- Texture
- brittle, waxy
What the percentage means here
Whatever it means for the underlying composition, usually semisweet. What the percentage does not tell you is the cocoa butter fraction, which on chips is deliberately low — and that is the property which defines the product.
Working with it
Do not use for tempering, coating, moulding or ganache. The reduced cocoa butter that makes chips hold their shape is precisely what those techniques need more of.
Commonly misunderstood
That chips are simply chocolate in a convenient shape. They are a different formulation, and readers whose ganache came out grainy or whose coating never set have usually met that difference rather than made a technique error.
Related
Commonly confused with
- Callets and pistolesNear-identical in the packet and engineered in opposite directions: chips resist melting, callets are made to melt.
Covered in
- Best chocolate for bakingFormulated not to melt, which is why they are the wrong choice for most bakes.
- Choosing chocolate for browniesWhy chips behave differently in a batter.
- Why chocolate will not setThe product most often responsible for the second cause.
- Best chocolate for cookiesThe product engineered to stay intact.
- Chocolate for frostingFormulated not to flow, which is why they fail in a frosting.
Compared in
- Chocolate chunks vs chocolate chipsSet against Chunks, which readers frequently believe is the same thing.
- Chocolate chips vs chopped chocolateSet against Chopped bar, which readers frequently believe is the same thing.
- Callets vs chocolate chipsSet against Callets, which readers frequently believe is the same thing.
Techniques that work with this
- Baking with chocolate chipsChips are engineered not to melt. That is the point of them, and the reason they are wrong for half the recipes that call for them.
- Choosing chocolate for cookiesOne decision decides everything: pools or pieces. Chips hold their shape, chopped bar does not.
History and culture
- The American baking traditionThe stabilised format, and why it will not behave as couverture in a ganache or a coating.
Sources
- ChocolateHQ editorial synthesis — ChocolateHQ(citation identity confirmed; passage not re-read)
- The Science of Chocolate — Royal Society of Chemistry(citation identity confirmed; passage not re-read)