Semisweet chocolate substitutes

This is the same chocolate in a different shape, so flavour and sweetness are identical. Chips carry slightly less cocoa butter and a little added stabiliser so they keep their shape in the oven.

Best for

cookies, brownies, muffins, melting into batter, quick bakes

The only difference you will notice is when the chocolate has to flow. Melted chips are stiffer and less glossy than a melted bar, so a ganache or a glaze made from chips looks dull and sets thick. Stir in 1 teaspoon of neutral oil per half cup to fix that.

Semisweet's job in a recipe is a balance of bitter cocoa flavour, sweetness, and cocoa butter that firms up as it cools. A 70% bar delivers more of the bitter and less of the sweet, so you top up the sugar.

Best for

brownies, cakes, ganache, cookies, mousse

Straight dark chocolate with no added sugar also works and many bakers prefer it; the bake simply tastes less sweet and more intense, with a slightly drier, more adult chocolate edge. In a ganache, dissolve the extra sugar in the warm cream so it does not feel gritty.

Unsweetened baking chocolate is pure cocoa solids and cocoa butter, so you are only adding back the sugar. This is the classic conversion and it is reliable.

Best for

brownies, cake batter, frosting, puddings, cookies

Fits well into anything with a wet batter, because the sugar dissolves on its own. Remember the sugar is extra sugar on top of what the recipe already lists, so do not accidentally count it twice.

Cocoa powder plus a fat plus sugar reassembles roughly what melted semisweet chocolate is made of. The chocolate flavour is often even more pronounced this way.

Best for

cake batter, brownies, cookie dough, frosting

The catch is that butter and oil stay soft at room temperature while cocoa butter sets hard. So this works in any batter and fails for truffles, dipped fruit, chocolate shells, or a glaze you expect to firm up, all of which stay tacky.

Milk chocolate carries roughly twice the sugar and a fraction of the cocoa, plus milk solids, so the result is distinctly sweeter, creamier and much less chocolatey.

Best for

chunk cookies, sweet bakes, children's desserts

Fine when the chocolate is a supporting player, like chunks in a cookie. Poor when the chocolate carries the dessert. It also thickens fast and scorches easily when melted, and it sets softer, so a semisweet ganache made with milk chocolate will not hold a pipeable texture without extra chocolate.

White chocolate has cocoa butter but no cocoa solids, so it has none of the brown chocolate flavour and none of the colour. It is sweeter than semisweet by a wide margin.

Best for

deliberately making a different dessert

Included because people ask. Substituting it produces a pale, very sweet, vanilla-and-dairy version of your recipe rather than a chocolate one. If that sounds good, cut the recipe's sugar by about a quarter, because white chocolate will otherwise make it cloying.