Cacao paste substitutes

The same product under an American supermarket name: pure cocoa mass moulded into bars or squares.

Best for

bean-to-bar chocolate making, brownies and flourless cakes, ganache and truffles, raw and no-bake desserts

Not a substitute so much as a relabelling, which is the single most useful thing to know about this ingredient. Standard unsweetened baking chocolate is cocoa mass with sometimes a little added cocoa butter or lecithin, nothing more. The only real difference from an artisan cacao paste is the bean and the roast: mass-market unsweetened chocolate is roasted dark and tastes deeper and flatter, where a single-origin cacao paste is often fruitier and more acidic. In a sweetened recipe that difference is subtle. Weigh rather than measure by volume.

The same cocoa mass sold in small melting discs by chocolate suppliers, often labelled cocoa liquor or cacao liquor.

Best for

chocolate making and tempering, bonbon shells, ganache, raw chocolate bars

Identical material in a more convenient shape, and generally the best-tasting option because these are aimed at chocolate makers rather than at bakers, so the beans are better and the roast is lighter. Discs melt faster and more evenly than a chopped block, which genuinely matters with 100 percent chocolate since it scorches easily. If the label says nothing but cacao or cocoa beans, that is exactly what you want.

A dark eating bar close enough to pure cocoa mass that the difference is mostly sugar.

Best for

brownies and cakes, ganache and mousse, hot chocolate, chocolate sauces

The most likely thing to be in the house, and it works well as long as you account for the sugar. An 85 percent bar is around 12 to 15 percent sugar by weight, so the sugar reduction stops the finished dessert tasting cloying. The other change is behaviour: eating bars contain lecithin and extra cocoa butter to make them smooth, so a ganache or a set chocolate made with them comes out softer and glossier and snaps less crisply than one made with pure paste.

Cacao paste taken apart and reassembled, since paste is essentially cocoa powder and cocoa butter that were never separated.

Best for

raw chocolate and bars, brownies and cakes, frostings and fillings, chocolate coatings

Compositionally this is very close to the real thing, and it is the only rebuilt version that will set hard, because cocoa butter is the fat that gives chocolate its snap. The differences you will taste are that natural cocoa powder is more acidic and less roasty than paste, so the result is slightly brighter and thinner-flavoured, and the mouthfeel is a touch drier and grittier because the powder was never conched together with the fat. Melt the cocoa butter first, then whisk the sifted cocoa in off the heat.

The pantry version, swapping cocoa butter for a fat you already have.

Best for

brownies, cakes and cupcakes, chocolate sauces and puddings, frostings

In anything baked or anything served soft this is genuinely fine, and in a brownie it is nearly undetectable. Where it fails, and fails completely, is anywhere the chocolate needs to be solid at room temperature. Coconut oil melts at around 76F or 24C and butter is soft well below that, so a bar or a shell made this way stays fudgy and fingerprints instantly, and it can never be tempered. Butter also brings water and milk solids, which makes the mixture more likely to seize; melt gently and stir it in off the heat.

The last-resort option, using sweetened chips to supply the cocoa solids and cocoa butter.

Best for

brownies and cookies, chocolate cakes, puddings and sauces, quick ganache

You need more chips than paste because chips are only about half cocoa solids, and then you have to take the sugar back out of the recipe, which is why this is fiddly. Chips are also deliberately formulated with less cocoa butter and more stabiliser so they hold their shape in the oven, which means they melt reluctantly and set into something thicker and duller than real chocolate. Fine in a batter, poor in anything where gloss and flow matter.