Chocolate Chips

Anyone who has an allergy or cooks for someone who does is no stranger to reading ingredient labels. We are those people at the grocery store standing brazenly in the aisle, squinting at the tiny print. When I began baking gluten and nut-free, I was surprised to find that good quality chocolate chips were hard to come by. My search happily ended at Trader Joe's with their semi-sweet chocolate chips. If you are a reader of ingredient lists, this one will certainly woo you. First off, it's short! The ingredients are minimal, which is a major plus. And for those of us concerned with too much soy, these ones are great.  They list soy-lecithin as the last ingredient and in this amount it is used as a binding agent. For those with an allergy to soy, this may even be too much, so you should know that, but for those avoiding it, these chips hit the mark.  

Second, semi-sweet chocolate is the most versatile baking chocolate, so you can safely buy just this one kind and it will work for most recipes. Third, these chocolate chips melt easily and are affordable. I think we'd all love to buy Valrhona or other high-end chocolate, but these chocolate chips taste fantastic and allow you to bake much more often. My fourth and final endorsement (though I could go on), is that the employees at Trader Joe's will happily double-check with their suppliers to insure that the chocolate chips that you are buying are free of (and processed away from) whatever allergens you are trying to avoid. Eating chocolate should never be a stressful matter, so I trust these chocolate chips to deliver the most delicious and safest bite. 

Be Sweet & 

See you soon. 

Geri