Aldi Chocolate, Ranked From Worst To Best

Arguably, the only thing better than chocolate is international chocolate. You don't need to go to a specialty shop to score some German chocolate though, because Aldi stocks high quality cocoa products. That's just one of many reasons you should be getting your chocolate from Aldi; you'll also find an affordable selection thanks to Aldi's unique features that cut costs for shoppers. Since chocolate is one of the very best foods to buy at Aldi, I tried 14 different bars the chain carries and ranked them from worst to best.

Aldi shoppers know that what you see in the physical store is what you get. Locations can't guarantee stock, so you may not find some of these options at your local store. However, all of the chocolates taste tested here are year-round fixtures at Aldi, so head away from the seasonal or Aldi Finds sections to find them. 

Instead, check out Aldi's own international chocolate selection, which is often not far from the produce section. All of the chocolates I tasted come with multiple servings and cost less than $3 each, making them ideal to share. Here's how Aldi chocolates stacked up for me, but feel free to scour your local shop to test out the flavors yourself.

Before I get into it, I just want to say that almost nothing on this list ranked the way I thought it would. I'm a cookies and cream fan through and through, and it is my preferred ice cream flavor. To have Choceur's Milk Chocolate Cookies 'N' Cream bar fall to the very bottom of this list was a total shock, as I had high hopes for it.

Inside the wrapping, the product was individually packaged into small bars, basically the size of a single piece of KitKat. Though it was a lot more packaging than I was expecting, I loved that the chocolate was very sharable and easily stored. When it comes to taste and texture though, this bar bombed.

The cookies and cream flavor was present, but seemed to lean more toward the creamy side of things. It was a whole lot of sweetness with no good crunch. I'd say the texture was more of a wet crumble, like the last dregs of a cookies and cream milkshake. It wasn't a bad quality chocolate, but I would not purchase it again. However, if you happen to like a sweeter chocolate treat, it may be worth giving it a go.

I'm usually quite a big fan of hazelnut in chocolate, but this Choceur bar fell very short. The chocolate was overly sweet and the hazelnut flavor didn't do much to complement it. There was also the addition of a milk flavor, which I found only added to the sweetness of the chocolate without offering up much else.

It was not only the taste that disappointed me when I tried this bar. The texture felt like an odd mix of creaminess and chalkiness, which I was not a fan of. I also wanted more of a crunch factor from the hazelnuts. Instead, they were chopped up into fine pieces, so there was very little action in the way of bite. If the taste had been there, that would have been easily overlooked. This chocolate gets placed near the bottom of the pack because I didn't find it particularly enjoyable at all. Those who have a particularly sweet tooth and don't care about crunchiness may feel differently.

Out of all the chocolates I taste tested, I was most looking forward to Choceur's Milk Chocolate Salted Pretzel Pieces bar. I was also, unfortunately, most disappointed with it. I love salty sweet flavor combinations that work well together, and chocolate covered pretzels are a go-to for me. I expected biting into this bar to be very similar to what I've come to know from the flavor profile of similar snacks. The actual bite though, was quite lackluster.

I had hoped the pretzel pieces would simply be bits of broken pretzels, like the packaging suggested. However, the pretzels were uniform bean-shaped nuggets sprinkled within the chocolate bar. The texture was majorly disappointing and did not have the crunch of a fresh pretzel. It actually tasted as if stale pretzels had been used. Luckily, the salt factor was still present, which was the only redeeming property that saved this bar from a lower ranking.

Though it is not one of Aldi's two house chocolate brands, Schogetten is a prominent option at the German chain. There are several flavors by the brand on store shelves, though I likely would not purchase this one again. Caramel and brownie should have played well together for a sweet and gooey chocolate bar, but I found the combo tasted a bit forced.

The brownie and caramel tastes were there, but they didn't mesh well. There was an extra flavor present that I felt interrupted the union of caramel and brownie, keeping them from reaching their full potential. The chocolate was a bit too milky in taste, but interestingly enough, this did not reach the texture. The consistency was a step above too creamy. Meanwhile, instead of being gooey, the caramel was crunchy. I actually enjoyed this element as it was a saving grace for a very average bar.

This is the only product I picked up for the taste test that is not one of Aldi's main chocolate brands. There were no other flavors or variations; Knopper seems to be an entity with its own identity. The German chocolate was made up of layers of wafer, hazelnut, and milk crème, which made for a very sweet treat.

While this chocolate was decent, I didn't really have any strong feelings toward it. I enjoyed all of the flavors it brought to the table, but wasn't overly impressed with the candy itself. The only thing that really stuck out to me was the sheer amount of wafer involved, which I did not love. If one, or even two, of the wafer layers were to be done away with, I feel the treat would be improved. As it is, the texture felt a bit too chalky and downplayed the layers of flavor that were almost hidden within. That being said, I do not think this candy should be entirely avoided; Aldi's five pack could be a solid pick for a family with a few kids.

This is about where the tide started to turn for me and the chocolate bars began to reach a level of satisfaction where I would personally buy them as a treat. I was especially excited to try the Choceur Milk Chocolate Peanuts and Cornflakes bar, because I have never seen cornflakes used in a chocolate bar before. I was intrigued and expected a notably crunchy texture, which I tend to like.

The consistency did not have as much bite as I expected, which might be because I anticipated more crunch from the cornflakes. I had envisioned the same level of crunch as dry cornflakes, not anticipating that the chocolate would make it much milder. This bar was basically a peanut chocolate bar with a bit of extra texture, and using cornflakes to achieve this variation was an interesting choice.

I feel as though this bar is both a novelty but remains a safe choice for those who like a solid chocolate bar with some texture. Still, the bar falls on the lower side of the rankings due to it not really standing out as a frontrunner in taste or texture. Other Aldi shoppers have found the bar to be very good though, so it's worth letting your taste buds decide.

I do not care for mint flavored anything, but I actually found this bar to be quite pleasant. Dark chocolate is the perfect flavor to complement mint, and Moser Roth really played the two components together expertly. The mint was mild but ever present throughout the bar. The taste reminded me vividly of a mint chocolate chip scoop, despite it being a solid decade or two since I've tried the popular ice cream flavor.

I enjoyed this bar's texture as much as its flavor. There were no chunks of mint to interrupt the smooth consistency and uniform taste, which I felt was a brilliant choice. A bar like this would be great as a treat by itself, used as a palate cleanser, or to complement other flavors. This Moser Roth bar had a cozy vibe, and heating it with milk would definitely create an elevated hot chocolate. It was hard to place this bar, as I found nothing at all wrong with it, but it finds itself about midway due to the greater complexity of the other bars.

Unlike nearly all of the other chocolates on this list, the Moser Roth Dark Chocolate Sea Salt bar gave me exactly what I expected. The dark chocolate was rich with a hint of bitterness, and the sea salt added just the right note. Unsurprisingly, the combination of the two flavors was a perfect duo.

The smooth dark chocolate alone had a solid taste, an opinion that was established and cemented between all the Moser Roth chocolates I tried. The addition of sea salt, which can be physically seen throughout the bar, provided a bit of texture and bursts of that familiar, sharp salty taste throughout.

This staple chocolate bar gets a ranking dead in the center not due to mediocrity, but because there are so many great options on this list. Its placement acts as a kind of pillar, as its reliability feels like a stabilizer between the unexpected rankings of the other bars.

Choceur's Milk Chocolate with Almond bar was another of the options I taste tested that met my expectations. I like a good nut bar, and this one contained whole almonds and was very straightforward. Though I prefer a dark chocolate treat, I could see the value of using milk chocolate as the smooth creaminess was the perfect foil for the hard almonds.

The Choceur Milk Chocolate Almond bar earned a spot on the upper end of this list due to its easygoing nature. Its simplicity makes it ideal for a snacking chocolate, and one I could see making a permanent staple in my kitchen drawer. The quality and richness of the chocolate mesh with the nutty almond flavor in an almost natural way. To me, that makes this basic Choceur flavor more powerful than many of the more "fun" or novel Aldi chocolates I tested.

The Schogetten Crunchy Peanut Butter chocolate bar was akin to an elevated Reese's Cup. It was very similar to what one would expect of the American candy, but I could taste higher quality ingredients at work. The chocolate and peanut butter cream complemented each other, with neither one overpowering the balance.

I wish this bar had more of a crunch factor; it would have ranked a bit higher if the peanut chunks were bigger or more plentiful. However, the slight crunch of the finely chopped peanuts was not a total loss. There is something to be said about subtlety, and I felt like this chocolate bar did a great job of keeping the presence of crunch alive without making the candy all about it. Considering "crunchy" is literally in the name though, it had to lose at least one ranking spot for the lack of bite.

Biting into the Choceur Milk Chocolate Coconut Flakes bar was the most shocking moment of all the taste tests for me. I have historically despised the texture of coconut flakes, and it has kept me away from anything related to coconut (except a single Samoas Girls Scout cookie once every handful of years). This has become something of a character trait for me, which now must change because I quite enjoyed this chocolate bar.

To tackle the texture issue, there actually wasn't much of one. I was worried because the coconut flakes were quite heavily spread throughout the bar. However, the chocolate seemed to completely coat each flake and cover up the typical coconut texture I associate with the flakes. Instead, the coconut was almost blended into the chocolate, adding ripples to the creaminess of the bar.

The taste of the coconut was more overpowering than the texture, but it was not unpleasant. Instead, the milk chocolate's sweetness was seemingly balanced out by it. I placed this bar higher up in the ranking due to its overall taste and texture, but also because I feel coconut lovers would enjoy the chocolate even more than I did.

Sweet and spicy is a flavor combination that almost always hits, and to me, it's superior to even that of sweet and salty. I was not surprised that I found the Dark Chocolate and Chili flavor by Moser Roth to be so good. What I didn't expect though, was for my four-year-old to love the chili infused chocolate bar too.

As I expected a good amount of heat from this bar, I had no intention to offer it to my son. He chose to try this chocolate out of all the options available, so I went with it out of curiosity. The heat was nowhere near as powerful as I had expected, but the presence of spice was certainly there. The chili flavor was very slight at first, but came on pronounced in the aftertaste. This Moser Roth bar had a very uniform, smooth texture that held my attention. Not only did I enjoy this flavor, but it is apparently kid-approved as well, which is why it lands in the top three spots.

Chocolate and oranges often get lumped together around the holiday season, and I have never understood why. Moser Roth's Dark Chocolate Orange Almond flavor sealed the deal for me on the flavor combination though, and I'm all in. The bitterness of the dark chocolate perfectly complemented the small chunks of orange, creating what is now one of my all time favorite Aldi products. The chocolate itself had a slight orange flavor throughout, and extra bits of orange added bursts of flavor as I worked my way through the bar.

My praise for this chocolate bar doesn't stop at the taste, as the texture was phenomenal as well. Instead of just a smooth bar of chocolate, this Moser Roth variety had an impressive depth I did not get in any of the other Aldi chocolates I taste tested. Chunks of chewy orange and crunchy almonds bits were scattered throughout the bar. The opposing textures worked well together, and the small size of the orange and almond pieces ensured they did not overpower one another or the dark chocolate. There is a lot going on in this small, thin bar, but every element works together in a heavenly balance.

As follows with the theme of the majority of this list, the number one spot came as a massive shock to me. I don't think I've ever reached for white chocolate anything since I was a small child — that's how much I dislike the chocolate variant. I also am generally not a fan of vanilla flavored desserts. However, I found myself blown away by the Moser Roth White Chocolate Madagascan Vanilla bar. It was not just the pleasant surprise that secured the number one spot for this Aldi sweet, but a smooth combination of well-balanced flavors.

People (and, at one time, the FDA) say that white chocolate isn't real chocolate, and I used to kind of agree, finding it too sickly sweet to be chocolate. The Madagascan Vanilla bar by Moser Roth changed my outlook on white chocolate, though. While it was indeed sweet, the vanilla and white chocolate flavors combined beautifully into a delicious taste. I'd reach for this bar again without hesitation, and I may even give white chocolate another chance altogether thanks to this surprising win.

Sampling 14 different kinds of European chocolate sounds like one heck of a good day at the metaphorical office. However, forming a distinct opinion about chocolate takes a bit more planning than enjoying a handful of bites. With 14 bars to taste test, I was a bit concerned that eating them back-to-back would make discerning individual flavors difficult. So, I spread tastings out to give each flavor its own time slot. I only ever tried three chocolates within the same hour, and spread out each round throughout the day. Ultimately, it took me a few days to complete the tasting for a fair comparison.

My main focus for the ranking was taste and texture, two of the most important factors that determine a good chocolate bar. I didn't give much thought to ingredients or additives, as Aldi has relatively good quality and nutrition practices, and the majority of the chocolates tested here came from three main brands.