Never Use This Chocolate Chip Brand In Your Desserts

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Chocolate chips are among the most popular baking ingredients and the star of some of America's favorite desserts. Everyone adores chocolate chip cookies, which are the number one cookie flavor, while chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream is in the top 5 favorite ice cream flavors in the U.S. If you've ever visited the baking aisle at your local grocery store, you'll know that there are dozens of chocolate chip brands to choose from. However, the one chocolate chip brand we suggest you avoid using in your desserts is Wegmans.

We tasted and ranked 15 chocolate chip brands based on the taste and texture of the semi-sweet chocolate discs. After all, they're such a necessary ingredient if you enjoy baking recipes like our brown butter chocolate chip cookies or these chocolate chip toffee cookies, we thought we should find out which ones were best ... and worst. While Wegmans' old-school packaging evoked a nostalgia that made our mouths water, the taste test was especially disappointing. We tasted these chocolate chips right out of the bag and slightly melted, and both versions left a chalky, dry mouthfeel with an offputting flavor that was more chemical than chocolate. Perhaps the fact that these chocolate chips are vegan translates to a lack of richness that dairy or milk solids might impart. Still, even dairy-free chocolate chips should supply that robust, slightly bitter cocoa flavor that Wegmans morsels clearly lacked. They weren't inedible, but they were no match for any of the other store and name-brand chocolate chips we sampled.

Customers on Wegmans own website gave many one-star reviews for the bad taste of these semi-sweet chocolate chips. Reviewers complained of a terrible chemical taste attributed to one of the emulsifying ingredients customers think is a new addition: sunflower lecithin. Wegmans customers swear that the semi-sweet morsels never used to have sunflower lecithin and implore the brand to revert back to the original recipe. One customer said the morsels used to be their go-to chocolate chips, but they just ruined a batch of chocolate chip cookies with the chemical taste of the latest formula. A Reddit post echoed the complaints from Wegmans customers, asking fellow Redditors if the supplier had changed for Wegmans chocolate morsels due to the odd chemical aftertaste they now have.

Wegmans is a regional, East Coast grocery chain, so many of us will avoid this disappointing morsel by default. We found that Trader Joe's and Kroger brands were tastier and more widely available. If you're specifically looking for dairy-free chocolate chips, we ranked Enjoy Life mega chunks (available on Amazon) higher than Wegmans.