The Best And Worst Trader Joe's Chocolate Bars

As part of its identity as an importer and self-brander of world goods, Trader Joe's sells a lot of chocolate. Not even counting all of the cookies, treats, and little candies, the chain stocks an abundant assortment of bars, comprised of . Most are made from cacao or chocolate sourced from historical hotbeds of crop production or craftsmanship and are either sold pure and simple or loaded with enhancements like nuts, oats, crispy rice, and coffee.

Despite the limited shelf space of the average store, the chain is devoted to giving its customers an array of choices when it comes to chocolate bars, among both . The Takeout took a trip to and purchased every single bar on offer and then determined which . Worst: Organic Dark Chocolate Bar 73% Cacao Some Trader Joe's treats harken back to while others are very much a product of the contemporary age.



The finest foods from around the world can be shipped in and sold for an impossibly low price, such as multiple dark chocolate bars, all with slightly different cacao percentages and with notable differences therein. , and the Trader Joe's Organic Dark Chocolate Bar 73% Cacao came from halfway around the world only to taste like it's good for you — ironically because it tastes so bad, much like medicine. This chocolate is made with such a high content of rich, pure, chemical-free cacao that one can taste every nuance of the raw crop.

It's bitter, it's earthy, and it's just too far removed from the dessert chocolate to which Americans have become accustomed. Best: Organic Dark Chocolate Bar with Almonds 73% Cacao The Dark Chocolate Bar with Almonds 73% Cacao is presumably exactly the same thing as the Dark Chocolate Bar, but made with something crunchy on the inside. The finely chopped nuts are a welcome addition to the punishing and severe chocolate.

To make up for the space required for a quite substantial helping of finely chopped almond bits, that means there has to be less chocolate inside. The crunch, tang, and nuttiness of the almonds works well to elevate the chocolate just a little bit, but it can be appreciated when it isn't the only thing coming at the eater. The almonds, however small they are, blend well with the very dark chocolate, and make for a nice bite of what tastes like very expensive and imported candy.

Best: Teensy Candy Bars Trader Joe's Teensy Candy Bars are extraordinarily tiny — just one of these habit-forming treats is half the size of a thumb. The idea here is clearly that Trader Joe's wanted to sell its own version of Snickers, but it had some industrial kitchen work out the recipe. It's a reasonable facsimile that in many ways is more preferable to the inspiration.

Teensy Candy Bars contain less nougat than do Snickers, and it's not as sugary, which allows the caramel to shine through and the peanuts to really pop. These taste like they were made with extra peanuts because the nutty, savory, salty level pushes right through all the other elements. That meshes nicely with the chocolate that covers it all and keeps everything in place.

It's not too sweet, or at least not as sweet as a Snickers. Worst: Milk Chocolate Covered Honeycomb Candy Trader Joe's Milk Chocolate Covered Honeycomb Candy is obviously meant to be a stateside substitute for the likes of Violet Crumble and other British candy that is hard to find in the U.S.

, which combine thick chocolate coating with a light, airy, and honey-dense crispy inside that melts in the mouth. Trader Joe's got some things right with its Milk Chocolate Covered Honeycomb Candy. The outer chocolate layer is thick and packs just mild sweetness, because the makers know the honey-flavored insides will take care of that.

And it does, but it's the wrong texture and look entirely. The inside of a piece, somewhere between an extra-large bite-size chunk and a miniature bar, is flaky like a croissant. And while it does taste like honey, it doesn't taste like real honey, nor does it dissolve upon consumption.

It's not light and airy either, rather too hard and stale. Best: Swiss Milk Chocolate with 30% Whole Hazelnuts Switzerland is famous for its chocolate, and that's where Trader Joe's sources its Swiss Milk Chocolate with 30% Whole Hazelnuts. It's as unpretentious as a chocolate bar can be, sold in a plain cardboard sleeve that promises authentic Swiss chocolate and a substantial hazelnut content.

This is easily the best chocolate bar sold by Trader Joe's, as it combines high-quality chocolate with hazelnuts that retain their freshness. The chocolate is creamy, smooth, and gently sweet, the sugar and cocoa butter represented equally. That all surrounds the hazelnuts that threaten to steal the spotlight.

Not only will a Trader Joe's customer get hazelnut in every bite, they'll get most of one. The hazelnuts are as crunchy as the chocolate is velvety, and as buttery as the chocolate is creamy. This is just an excellent low-key candy bar that costs less than high-end name brands.

Worst: Swiss Dark Chocolate with 30% Whole Hazelnuts Trader Joe's Swiss Dark Chocolate with 30% Hazelnuts, doesn't offer an improvement or a benefit on the Swiss milk chocolate and nuts bar. Dark chocolate, at least not the slightly dark chocolate used here, and hazelnuts, don't seem to pair well. One might think they would because the bitterness of the chocolate would play off the buttery sweetness of the hazelnuts, but that doesn't happen.

There's no sweetness to be found. What's present in the dark chocolate, and there isn't much, gets completely buried by the taste of the hazelnuts, far more pronounced here than in the milk chocolate version of the same bar. It might be real dark chocolate made by experts in Switzerland, but why ruin such a supposedly passionately made product by adulterating it with giant hazelnuts? Best: Dark Chocolate Coffee Buzz Chocolate-covered espresso beans provide a hit of chocolate when wanted and caffeine when needed.

While the tastes of chocolate and coffee famously go well together, as they've got notes of one another in each other's complex flavor profile, they're not the most physically palatable combo. Chomping down on a gritty, crunchy, and bitter coffee bean ruins the surrounding sweet, soft chocolate. That's why Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Coffee Buzz Bar is such a revelation.

Each serving contains 70 milligrams of caffeine, same as a strong cup of coffee and way more than a handful of espresso beans. The bar tastes like those beans covered in dark chocolate, but with more of a balance between those two elements. And the coffee is just part of the mixture — there's nothing but crunch-free, straight chocolate here.

Worst: The Dark Chocolate Lover's Chocolate Bar 85% Cacao It's downright baffling that Trader Joe's would so explicitly direct self-proclaimed dark chocolate lovers to its Dark Chocolate Lover's Bar Chocolate Bar 85% Cacao, a candy that doesn't possess many of the traits that dark chocolate lovers love about dark chocolate. Instead of layered flavors, with a deep and luscious bitterness leading the way, this dark chocolate starts off very sweet. The bitterness doesn't hint at any other flavor notes either, only turning into sourness and a displeasing aftertaste that may last for the better part of 20 minutes.

The Dark Chocolate Lover's Bar Chocolate Bar tastes nothing like the other, better products in its category sold by Trader Joe's, and instead like a spoonful of Nesquik chocolate milk mix — and it's almost as grainy. Best: Single Origin Organic Dark Chocolate with Vanilla Bean This is a chocolate bar stocked by Trader Joe's loaded with little more than adjectives. A lot of labor, history, and botany led to the creation of Trader Joe's Single Origin Dark Chocolate with Vanilla Bean.

All of the cacao used to make the chocolate came from the African island of Madagascar, a locale best known for producing the majority of the world's vanilla. That's prominent here as well, and the chocolate acts as a foundation to elevate the vanilla. This bar is a revelation and a novelty.

Vanilla often tones down chocolate with a particular sweetness, but since this Madagascar chocolate is already so sweet, the vanilla flavor moves right to the forefront. We didn't know a chocolate bar for vanilla lovers was necessary or possible, but here it is. Worst: 70% Peruvian Cacao Dark Chocolate Bar A large bar of wafer-thin, delicate squares with no adornments, the Trader Joe's 70% Peruvian Cacao Dark Chocolate Bar is as elegant as a store-brand chocolate bar could ever be.

The item itself is so fresh, crisp, and bursting with pure, complex, and layered cacao flavor that it must be wonderful to a seasoned lover of dark chocolate. They could find notes and hints of other flavors in it, much like a wine or scotch enthusiast can. But as a chocolate bar for snacking or as a dessert, it's an endurance test.

This is a chocolate that's hard to get lost in just because it's so intense. It tastes less like a processed and blended chocolate bar and more like raw cacao, but also like a cup of exceedingly strong canned black coffee. Best: Oat Chocolate Bars What with the many alternative, plant-based milks long sold by Trader Joe's, it's easy to be misled into thinking that the grocery chain's Oat Chocolate Bars are made with oat milk, currently enjoying a cultural moment.

They're not — the Oat Chocolate Bars are real chocolate, meaning they're made with cocoa butter, but also several other largely nature-made ingredients. Ground oats are part of the mix, along with cane sugar and rice syrup. While that could result in a bar that tastes like health food or fake chocolate, the opposite is true.

Trader Joe's Oat Chocolate Bars are as smooth as traditional chocolate bars, maybe even slightly more delicate, while also toning down the sweetness just so. Mass-produced name-brand bars leave you wanting more; one small bar of Trader Joe's Oat Chocolate is enough. Best: Oat Chocolate Bars with Crispy Rice and Cocoa Nibs The recipe for Trader Joe's Oat Chocolate Bars makes for a very good candy, with its velvety and slow-building chocolate flavor.

That's a great foundation for the kind of bar that's stuffed with other ingredients, and the ones chosen for the Oat Chocolate Bars with Crispy Rice and Cocoa Nibs complement the star very well. The rice bits turn this bar into what feels like a high-end Nestlé Crunch, providing just a hint of crispiness and texture. Burying a bunch of cocoa nibs inside of a chocolate bar is actually quite audacious — it's just more chocolate.

But it's different enough, more savory than sweet and extremely rich but not overpowering because only tiny nibs are included, to make for an interesting chocolate interplay. The nibs are naturally a little bit more solid than the surrounding chocolate, so they add some texture that's wholly different from that of the crispy rice. Worst: Chocolate Covered Wafer Cookie With that familiar orange color and description-by-way-of-name providing clues, Trader Joe's Chocolate Covered Wafer Cookie wants to be the quirky grocery juggernaut's take on KitKat.

However, it's not a whole-cloth ripoff of that popular name brand candy bar; the item plays out like a mix between a KitKat and those cheap cookies sold at drugstores made from lightweight wafers with sweetened paste in between the layers. Everything is so slight in this Trader Joe's bar that it feels like eating nothing at all. The wafers on the inside are seemingly microns thick, with barely detectable chocolate in between them, and it's all coated in a robe of chocolate that lacks all flavor.

The end product is a candy bar that's so airy as to be ephemeral. Worst: Chocolate Covered Wafer Cookie with Peanut Butter Filling If the Trader Joe's Chocolate Covered Wafer Cookie tasted like air-injected nothing, the slightly more thoughtfully created Trader Joe's Chocolate Covered Wafer Cookie with Peanut Butter Filling offers at least a nod toward flavor and texture. As the wafers are so thin and the inclusion of chocolate is such an afterthought, so too is the notion that peanut butter is an ingredient here.

This candy bar smells like peanuts and the aftertaste is strictly salty, but other than that, there's no creaminess or nutty flavor imparted at all. It turns into a toffee-like sticky paste in the teeth that leaves behind a sourness. The peanut butter used here, usually an addition that increases the quality of a chocolate bar by many degrees, makes the Chocolate Covered Wafer Cookie far worse.

Best: Dark Chocolate Bar An entry level dark chocolate bar for sure, the simply named Dark Chocolate Bar, the one sold by the checkouts at Trader Joe's in packs of three for less than $2, is of a basic construction and flavor. It's not going to wow any hardcore dark chocolate aficionados — Trader Joe's has a staggering number of options with a high cacao percentage to satisfy that segment of the population — but it's nice for when you want something chocolate but don't want something powerfully sweet. The Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Bar is as it should be — it chunks off nicely, doesn't easily melt upon biting, and is equal parts bitter and sweet.

It gives off that distinct dark chocolate kick, but only momentarily as it fades into a pleasant and lingering aftertaste. Worst: 72% Cacao Dark Chocolate Bar Another in the line of the cashier station-adjacent Trader Joe's chocolate bars is made small and sold in packs of three. The 72% Cacao Dark Chocolate version is maybe a good choice for those curious about dark chocolate.

A modest portion inexpensively priced, it's one that can be easily skipped before delving into the Trader Joe's selection of large dark chocolate bars boasting intimidatingly high cacao counts. The 72% Cacao Dark Chocolate Bar still has lots of cacao, meaning there's less room for sweetener and other ingredients that might make for a more pleasant or well-rounded flavor. It tastes like a mass-market dark chocolate bar in that it's just a little sweet, but abundant with so much chocolate as to be unwieldy.

It's very similar in all ways to the Dark Chocolate Bar, but with a fruitier sensibility and a bittersweet, overwhelming aftertaste that hits while you're still eating it. Best: Crispy Rice Milk Chocolate Bar Trader Joe's Crispy Rice Milk Chocolate Bar is identified by its ingredients, but its true purpose is easily discernible: This is the grocery store company's answer to the Nestlé Crunch Bar. And while that is an iconic candy bar, a marvel made by mixing milky, creamy, luxurious milk chocolate with bits of crisped rice, Trader Joe's actually made a better bar.

The Crispy Rice Milk Chocolate Bar is just a little bit thicker than its name-brand inspiration and competition, which allows for a more solid bite and more fulfilling mouthfeel. It also eases up on the rice. If Nestlé packs the Crunch bar with rice to save money on the chocolate, Trader Joe's avoids that trap.

There's plenty of crispy rice, but not so much that it distracts from the very good and moderately sweet milk chocolate. Worst: Milk Chocolate Bar Another one of small, simple, nondescript but well-made imported chocolate sold in three-packs at the front of any Trader Joe's, the Milk Chocolate Bar is perfectly fine. It's sweet, creamy, and really the ideal of what an easy to grab, inexpensive, impulse-bought chocolate bar ought to be.

It's a foundational candy bar, but since the whole point of Trader Joe's is curation, with the store providing items that can't be found anywhere else, the Milk Chocolate Bar is not worth buying. It's simply a substitute for a name-brand chocolate bar because Trader Joe's doesn't sell name brand products. It's just so simple and easy, but when there are so many other more interesting chocolate bars to try at Trader Joe's, both with nuts or without, or darker or sweeter, this is one that can languish on the shelf without missing anything.

Methodology Because Trader Joe's sells so many products covered, enrobed, or encased in chocolate, The Takeout needed to define exactly what a "chocolate bar" from Trader Joe's would be before any rating or recommendations could be made. No bite-size candies, chocolate-covered fruits, or chocolate-covered cookies were considered, only products sold by Trader Joe's under its store brand or private label made primarily or entirely out of chocolate. The products chosen are the 18 full-size chocolate products, presented in bar form, and sold in either single unit or multiple unit blocks, or in two instances, as a bag of miniatures.

Chocolate bars discussed herein are nationally available at Trader Joe's and on a permanent basis; no seasonal or limited-time-only merchandise was considered. Each chocolate was then evaluated on the basis of taste, with special attention paid to sweetness, chocolate flavor, as well as mouthfeel and the ability to satiate. Value was also a consideration, inasmuch as most products fell within a narrow price range of $1 to $3.

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