Cocoa and Chocolate (Including Your Favorite Candy Bars) Are Getting More Expensive

After a poor cocoa crop and other market challenges, the price of cocoa is going up—as is the price of chocolate. Here’s what every chocoholic needs to know.

If you’ve noticed a rise in the price of your favorite chocolatey treat, there’s a reason: Far from your local grocery store where you toss a Reese's bar or ice cream sandwich into your basket when a craving comes up, a lack of rain, aging trees, and diseased plants have all severely impacted the cocoa grown in Ghana and the Ivory Coast and used by candy manufacturers globally. Due to the troubled crops, the International Cocoa Organization has forecast a staggering 374,000-ton shortfall of cocoa needed to make chocolate candy, cookies, cakes, and more, whether homemade or store-bought.

Growers are less motivated to replace diseased trees or those too old to produce cocoa because it takes a substantial amount of time for them to become moneymakers. Coupled with drought conditions, this will continue to cause problems with cocoa supplies.

Related: 9 Easy Chocolate Candy Recipes That You'll Want to Make in Bulk

So cocoa prices have increased significantly as the demand outpaces supply. For much of the last decade, a ton of cocoa was priced around $2,500; in the past few months, the cost has skyrocketed. It recently topped out at a whopping $11,000 in mid-April and settled (for the time being) at $8,699 in the second week of May.

All of these factors result in the price of chocolate remaining noticeably higher for the foreseeable future. Hershey has raised its prices by 5%, according to the New York Times, and Mondolez, the European manufacturer of Toblerone and Cadbury, has raised its prices by 6%.

Related: Here's the Best Chocolate Glaze Recipe For Cakes, Cookies, Donuts, and More

What to Substitute for Chocolate and Cocoa

If sticker shock for the price of baking chocolate has you cutting back on your favorite dessert recipes, you still have options for getting that rich, sweet flavor. Our Test Kitchen recommends you try swapping in one of the following:

Chocolate replacement for 1 ounce unsweetened chocolate

• 3 tablespoons cocoa powder + 1 tablespoon vegetable oil or melted shortening

• 1½ ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate (you may want to omit 1 tablespoon of sugar from the rest of the recipe)

Chocolate replacement for 1 ounce bittersweet chocolate, semisweet chocolate, or milk chocolate

• ⅔ ounce unsweetened chocolate + 2 teaspoons sugar

• 3 tablespoons chocolate chips

• 3 tablespoons unsweetened or Dutch-process cocoa powder + 3 tablespoons sugar + 1 tablespoon melted butter or shortening

Related: This Handy List of Baking Substitutions Will Save You in a Pinch

Recipes that use dates as a chocolate substitute make for healthier alternatives often approved by registered dietitians and sugar-free cooking experts—saving you money and giving you a nutritional boost at the same time. You could also replace your chocolate with carob, which is available in chip form and as a powder.

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