I’m curious what everyone’s dark chocolate ranges are? Preferences? Palatability wise. Not what’s healthy or whatever. I can’t do 100% but 95% is really nice. 90-85% gets a little sugary. 80% and lower isn’t palatable to me. I’m a fan “Raaka”, “Lindt” and “Green & Blacks”
Thank you for your attention to this matter!
I only liked 70% but I make my own and that is 30% or what as I don’t use cocoa butter.
But my fav is milk chocolate. I can’t make it (or it’s too complicated, I do have cocoa butter to make white chocolate and mix it with our dark one to get something like milk chocolate… but that’s for once a year? and it’s not quite like what I like) so I almost never ate it in the last 1.5 decades. No problem, it’s quite possible to live without it, I still have plenty of great desserts and eat some every day.
My own chocolate has no added sweetness as I want chocolate, not sweetness despite I do love sweet things. Just like my cocoa drink is unsweetened… And I really dislike added sugar.
My SO likes when his chocolate is about 45% cocoa powder. He uses the same amount of coconut fat as cocoa powder, I use WAY more fat (and it’s butter now as it’s about the same price
and butter is obviously superior even though a bit watery and soft so it doesn’t give me crunchy chocolate wafers). And his is sweetened a tiny bit.
I love 100% chocolate with creamy cocoa butter. Sometimes I melt it in the m-w, stirr in some allulose sugar, then freeze it it. Delicious, sweet as you want it, low carb, non insulinogenic, glp1RA mimetic, etc.
I like some of the really high percentages, but only certain ones. Taza 85% for instance. It’ s ridiculously expensive, though.
After that, I have a hard time eating greater than 70%.
I do use 100% to make things (like “mousse”), but I find I have to add a lot of allulose to make it palatable.
This may be because I think I have an issue with the higher percentages, as I THINK they can make me wake up at night. There does seem to be a pattern, but I can’t 100% prove it.
Where I live, chocolate prices have skyrocketed. The “bar” prices are easily $1+ more than they used to be. Went to look at chocolate for Mother’s Day, and the bars were $7 each. Yikes.
That’s a smallish change then…? Cocoa powder price almost doubled here not so very long ago (I am bad with time, maybe last year?)… So our homemade chocolate is significantly more expensive now. Oh well. It’s a staple for my SO who can’t give up little joys, his life is hard enough.
You have an impressive palate! Most people tap out long before 95%. I totally get what you mean about the 80s starting to taste a bit too sugary once your tastebuds adjust to the dark stuff. Lindt 90% is a staple in my house, but Raaka is such a great choice for that unique, unroasted flavor. It’s awesome that 95% is your sweet spot!
Sometimes I find 95% comes across bitter; I’m often eating it w/ walnuts. So it’s diluted. But I have pounds of Lindt 95 in my stockpile. Raaka 90% is really impressive & really expensive. But Organic and probably the best out there.
I like 95% also. I started with 72%, and gradually made my way up to 95%. Without sugar or artificial sweeteners (I can’t stand them, they leave a weird aftertaste for me), my taste buds have become much more sensitive. The 95% actually tastes sweet most of the time. I have moved to mostly carnivore and have stopped eating chocolate for now…
Welcome Sally. That’s exactly my experience and exactly why I made the thread. Exactly how I feel about artificial sweeteners as well. Chemical aftertaste. Fat adaption must result in your tongue sensing sugar differently. Unsweetened organic almond butter tastes really sweet to me. Like how I remember icing on a cake when I was younger.
There are very many kinds of sweeteners (and some are natural like stevia. xylitol and erythritol exists in plants too but we process them somehow). I hate most aftertaste with a passion (stevia, aspartame, monk’s fruit and so on) but erythritol, xylitol and maltitol is fine. Maltitol makes no sense and only xylitol is tasty (way tastier than normal sugar, normal sugar has no flavor beyond sweetness) though.
On my carnivore escapades I have learned to depend on sugar (lactose) and I still do that a lot even though I brought back my sugar alcohols. My white chocolate probably would work unsweetened (after getting used to it, I always ate very sweet white chocolate while I am used to the unsweetened dark one. but the latter has cocoa powder as it’s main selling point, poor white chocolate is inferior) due to its high amount of natural sugar.
It was the lack of added sugar in my family. Lots of carbs, natural sugars and sweets galore didn’t matter as long as we almost never ate added sugar. Our sweet perception changed drastically and reached the same level even though we all ate quite different. Fat adaptation did nothing more in my case (out of us 3, only I ate low-carb enough), carnivore did a little but it’s possible I lost that. I don’t know, it was a subtle change and don’t really remember beyond the fact there was one.
I like this change even though it made some of my fav fruits excessively sweet but I can handle that using tiny amounts (and in some cases, eating the fruits half-ripe). Or pouring unsweetened chocolate on the overly sweet but flavorful thing.
Just went to the store and was looking at a 95% Ghirardelli chocolate. It was $7 or $8 for a 3.5 ounce bar. The 95% Taza was about $6 for a 2.5 ounce bar.
I got a 70% chocolate bar (4 ounces, for cooking) for $5.50.
Maybe this doesn’t seem like a lot, but this is $11 for a recipe I make (though I use 100% for that), and that doesn’t include the coconut milk, powdered chocolate, vanilla, coconut oil, allulose, etc.
Oh it seems like alot. I was buying Organic Black & Greens at Kroger for 1.99 in 2020.
We bought some nice cocoa powder again (4kg, it won’t last for very long even if I barely touch it. very important staple for my SO). The price dropped drastically. Yeah, our currency got stronger lately 
I am experimenting with white chocolate again. Milk powder isn’t smooth, cream worked better (I evaporated some water).