To want a PLAIN bar of chocolate?

[CommanderTaggart]

Went to Morrisons this morning, wanted a plain bar of chocolate for a recipe (ideally Bourneville).

Well, what a chore! Did they have plain bourneville? They did not. They had Borneville with rum and raisin, and bourneville with salted caramel, but plain bournevill? There was none.

So I turned to look at the Green & Blacks. Orange, Mint, Ginger, Salted Caramel again (euch!) were in abundance, and when I did in fact find the plain normal chocolate it was not ‘on offer’ as the other bars were and was going to cost me about £3.50 for a very modestly sized bar. Annoying, but hey-ho.

I looked around again just to see what other options there were (I was considering a plain Dairy Milk at this point if it was more reasonably priced) and realised that finding a PLAIN bar of chocolate was a near impossibility! Everything had fruit, nut, biscuit, pretzel, honeycomb, caramel or various praline-type fillings. The only plain Dairy Milk chocolate I could find was either a huge enormous bar that surely not many people would buy, or in multipack form.

Now maybe my local Morrisons is just poorly stocked, but I do think this is a trend?

It took me back when I was travelling abroad 20 years ago and went looking for chocolate in rural African shops. It was almost impossible to find an actual bar, it was always chocolate covered wafers or nuts. I remember thinking at the time it was because chocolate would melt in the heat, until somebody told me that it was at least partly because chocolate was so expensive and most people couldn’t afford it, even though cocoa plants grow in Africa, most of it was shipped abroad.

So now I am wondering whether chocolate is just getting too expensive for the people of the UK hence our ‘chocolate bars’ are being filled up with more affordable crappy ingredients like ‘cookie’ and ‘salted caramel’?

I think she means both. She wanted dark chocolate without other bits but considered milk when she couldn’t find it.
OP - it’s very odd not to be able to find plain dark chocolate.

Lidl has a massive selection of plain chocolate from milk to 85% dark. And well priced.

Thanks, I will try the baking aisle next time. I don’t bake often so I didn't realise they had normal chocolate there. Or indeed a different shop.

My wider point though is that chocolate in general seems to be full of shite these days!

For baking, I always use the value stuff that used to be 30 p a bar, likely more now but still much cheaper than branded chocolate.

50% cocoa and perfectly fine for brownies, tiffin or topping cakes.

I'd probs just chuck in a Freddo and see what happens

But for reals tho Lidl is a sound bet

Yes that is true. I was reading about Cadburys being taken over by Kraft. The Americans said they spent too much on cocoa bean which is expensive, making plain bars very expensive to make. They planned to start filling the bars with fillers, to save money on chocolate. I too prefer plain bars, and hate all these new filled bars.

To be fair, Kraft bought Cadbury almost 16 years ago.

your Morrisons sounds poor. I don’t struggle to find plain chocolate anywhere to be honest! Whether it’s nice or not is another matter but it’s available.

aldi, Lidl, Mand S own chocolate are my favourite.

Lidl 😀 I buy it (far too) regularly 🍫

Lindt do plain dark chocolate and they always have it in my local Morrisons! 70% and also a 90% dark chocolate if you want it really intense!

Cooking choc op

Go to Aldi for Moser Roth brand of dark choc. It's got various cocoa %s up to 85 I think. And it's gorgeous. Half in your gob and half in the recipe is my advice!

Is everyone else seeing Lindt chocolate ads on this thread now or just me? 😆

I was going to say this. Plenty of plain chocolate - 70% or, my preference, 85%.

I think people just like all the different flavours. I don’t think it makes it a lot cheaper to add little bits of candied orange peel to the chocolate, or mint or something. I do hear you on the cookies thing, I don’t want chunks of cookies in my chocolate but my kids often do.
Also if all they sold was dark and milk, the chocolate section would be pretty small. I think you just got unlucky on the day - I’ve always been able to find a range of dark chocolate types. They’re not usually the ones on offer though as I think dark chocolate is less popular than milk or “salted caramel cookie” type stuff.

Lidl and Aldi both have a good range of great quality chocolate bars, dark and milk chocolate.

@Bjorkdiditabout 80p these days.

I just bought the saver range in Morrisons!

Biscuit and wafer bits have ruined most chocolate for me. Things like dairy milk are now a no go due to gluten contamination from all the add ons. Then bloody McDonalds start adding biscuits to their cold drinks and bingo, there's another thing I can't have anymore (even the non biscuit flavours due to the contamination). So bits in everything are the bane of my dietary life.

I will warn you that the chocolate in the baking aisle is usually cooking chocolate and of somewhat lower quality.
I agree it's hard to find the plain plain chocolate in among all the flavours and Bourneville is less reliably available than it used to be. Part of the reason may be because of the enormous increase in price of dark chocolate so the bars with other bits in will be cheaper.

Out of interest, is it plain Lindt chocolate?

I’ve never find it hard. There are always bars of plain dark chocolate of different cocoa percentages I’m the shelf in the main supermarkets round here. Not sure about the metro ones, but I’d be surprised if there wasn’t.

Chocolate prices have soared, so yeah a bar that is more chocolate and less other things with coat more.

But most supermarkets have own brand plain dark chocolate, additionally theres dairy milk, freddos, cooking chocolate in the baking aisle. Suspect this time of year you may have had more luck with the specials aisle for trickortreating and christmas treats

I'm annoyed you can't buy the mini green and black bars anymore. And agree there's definitely a gap in the market for a small normal sized dark chocolate bar.

It is! While taking on board the advice to try Lidl's (will do), I could also mention: Menier's Chocolate (lime-green & white wrapper) in the baking aisle at Tesco and Divina often available in Oxfam shops.

I was actually drowning in nostalgia this weekend over actual plain chocolate. Plain chocolate digestives particularly. It wasn't dark chocolate and it wasn't milk chocolate. I loved that it wasn't as sweet as milk chocolate. These days everything is about really dark chocolate.

I also love violet or rose fondants and unless you go somewhere really expensive it's all dark chocolate and not plain or milk.

I'm also getting fed up with chocolate that has bits in or weird flavourings.