Chocolate substitution finder
Works out what to use when a recipe calls for a chocolate you do not have, and what else must change as a result.
Brownies
Brownies carry a large amount of sugar and fat of their own, so a percentage swap moves the result rather than breaking it. Adjust the sugar and accept a denser or lighter crumb.
Watch for: Too high a percentage without adding sugar gives a dry, crumbly bake rather than a fudgy one. That reads as overbaking and is not.
Works with adjustment
Works, with the adjustments below
The recipe assumed roughly 0g of sugar and 52g of fat per 100g of chocolate; yours carries about 30g and 39g. The adjustments close that gap.
Use 200g of dark chocolate.
- Your chocolate carries more sugar than the recipe assumed. Reduce the recipe's sugar by about 60g.
- Your chocolate carries less fat. Add roughly 26g of butter or oil, or expect a drier result.
- Brownies carry a large amount of sugar and fat of their own, so a percentage swap moves the result rather than breaking it. Adjust the sugar and accept a denser or lighter crumb.
- Watch for: Too high a percentage without adding sugar gives a dry, crumbly bake rather than a fudgy one. That reads as overbaking and is not.
- In a bake the chocolate is melted into the mixture, so temper and melt behaviour are irrelevant. Sugar and fat are the only variables that matter.
What this cannot tell you
- The sugar and fat figures are TYPICAL compositions for each type, not measurements of your specific product. Two 70% bars can differ by ten percentage points of cocoa butter.
- Substitution changes sugar, fat and cocoa solids simultaneously, and compensating for all three is not always possible.
- White chocolate cannot substitute for dark on any basis — it contains no cocoa solids, so there is no adjustment that recovers the flavour or the colour.
- It cannot tell you whether the result will taste good, only whether the arithmetic works. A substitution that balances perfectly can still be the wrong chocolate for the dish.
- For coating and moulding it will refuse rather than adjust, because couverture and compound differ in working properties rather than in composition.
The substitution that catches people out
Unsweetened chocolate contains no sugar at all. Replacing it with a 55% bar adds roughly 45g of sugar per 100g of chocolate, which in a brownie — where chocolate is a large share of the total mass — changes the texture as well as the sweetness. That is the single most common cause of an American recipe going wrong in a European kitchen. See chocolate substitutions.