There are a lot of things it could be. I've been having this problem with some chocolate which is now being made with coconut oil. I'm allergic to coconut, which may or may not be why chocolate made with it tastes musty or like the proverbial ”feet” to me. That's not an issue with Baker's, however. I bought a few different ones recently, to try, but haven't used them yet.

Older chocolate can sweat or have oil migration, and moisture can make the sugar weird, but those usually affect texture rather than flavor, and at worst makes it taste flat and wimpy. I suppose the wrapper could be an issue, but it doesn't seem likely, so I googled it, and that said that chocolate which has been improperly stored/handled indeed can taste like the plastic.

I'm sorry your brownies were ruined. I've been trying to perfect cocoa powder brownies this summer--and they're easier, but have a different flavor.

hey share your recipe JC ... I have noted an evolution in the taste of Bakers over the epoch, and don't really care for the present iteration. My ten year old Bakers in the cupboard is better than new store bought Bakers ... IMHO

Oh, no! Dave, I'm sorry to hear that Baker's has devolved so badly. I'll have to do a side by side with the others I got. But do you think it's bad enough to be as Sandyslopes described? The complaints I remembered were about the sizing change rather than the quality/flavor.

Recipe? Do you mean for brownies? I'm still working on it. I have one that has a good crisp top, one that I messed with too much to the cakey side, though people liked it, and one with bananas in it that's really fudgy and good but was too gooey the first time, and needs another go. I was going to do the last today, but decided to wait for my grocery delivery with some white baking chocolate to try a recipe for banana blondies which looks promising. When I get them to the point of sharable, I promise I'll post. Meantime, there are a bunch of good brownie recipes in the forum, both from my thread when I started this, and one from a number of years ago, which I think was linked in the recent thread. I got the variety of baking chocolate because I think I used the Betty Crocker recipe in my youth, which I thought called for cocoa powder, but turned out to want actual chocolate.

I switched to Ghirardelli's brand - easily available here in the West as it was originally a San Francisco-based company. Much better than Baker's, I think.

I used to use Hershey's Chocolate for baking but haven't since they changed the recipe and proportion of chocolate. I prefer to use Scharffenberger now.

I'm a Valrhona fam but this is the wrong time of year to ship it...

plllog, luckily, I was the only one who seemed to notice. Others ate it and wanted some to take home, but even a few days later I could still taste that plastic flavor. I think I should have used a newer pack. I noticed today that there are expiration dates on the bottom of the box of a newer pack I have. That was probably the biggest reason for the off taste, but I would like to try some different kinds.

I like that you're perfecting your brownie recipe!

jakkom, I'll look for the Ghiradelli's brand. I know I like their mini chocolate chips when I can find them.

Kate and plllog, thanks for the other two recommendations. I'm taking them down because I wondered if there were other quality brands I might not know about. I'll wait for cooler weather to mail order.

aziline, that's an interesting find! How did I not know about a chocolate program so close to me?!? Now I want to try some of their regular chocolate.

Sandyslopes, you might also be able to find Guittard in the stores, and Valrhona is sometimes available at Whole Foods, repacked from bulk.

I think expectation has a lot to do with taste. People eat salt in quantities that would blow my tastebuds, but their brains kind of subtract the salt flavor and let them taste the actual food. While others, like you, notice the plastic taste that no one else is bother by, making it seem like they only taste the parts they expect to taste.

So, the thing about "expiration dates" is that most food doesn't expire. The dates let the store know when to pull product and the consumer know which has been sitting there too long, but really, it's the date where if the product isn't at it's best before the date, you can easily get your money back. As mentioned above, chocolate can start to kind of come apart, and "bloom" either the fat or the sugar, it can dry out, it can melt and reharden, it can get musty or moldy.

The "plastic" flavor is unlikely to have come from the wrapper, but anything is possible. Fats and plastic both have hydrocarbons, so it's possible that heat or some other environmental factor make that plasticy taste come out. We had a member here who said she knew when her pans were seasoning right because she could smell the plasticy odor of the cooking oil polymerizihng on the pan (or something like that). For more fun with science, white onions can turn aqua blue when they cook. :)

While the USU Creamery turned 100 years old (!!) this year they have only been doing Chocolate for 5.

The most interesting part of the tour (they are happy to give them when you pop in) is that since the Cocoa Butter is so expensive companies will swap it out, or rather, use cocoa powder and a different fat (or maybe some cocoa butter) to make their chocolate. I assumed other fats were added so it made more chocolate not because they took all or some of good fat out to begin with.

The Go Aggie Bar is their Hershey Chocolate bar but you'd be hard pressed to say they taste like the same thing :)

Thank-you, Aziline, for the interesting information! The chocolate program at USU is really smart for several reasons, including getting people interested in their campus with the chocolate tour. :) Fascinating about the cocoa butter. But they use that in cosmetics and other non-food applications. The chocolate made with coconut oil seems to be prevalent where it's meant to be softer than normal, like in ice cream, both chips and fudge. But perhaps that's also cheaper!

I just made a recipe I've been wanting to try for banana brownie blondies, and used a package of Baker's white chocolate. I checked it for any kind of odor/taste like you described. Of course, it's not actual chocolate, and just new (a few days ago) from the store (quickie delivery place that has OJ, and Baker's was their only choice). The new(-ish) candy bar shape and plastic liner were things I'd heard about. It felt weird, but the wrapper seems like a standard candy wrapper, which I've never had go funky for other products. More and more my guess is going towards some kind of weird polymerization happening with your chocolate. I tried to look it up and found scientific studies, way beyond my vocabulary, talking about polymerization regarding various qualities in chocolate. I don't know if that's in any way related to your funny smell, but it's intriguing.

I have had Baker's Chocolate go rancid when I kept it in the cupboard.

cindy, it wasn't so much of a rancid taste, but I could see that happening.

bragu, I wondered later if you're serious about having Baker's Chocolate that's really that old! If so, did you package it some special way? I was thinking that I might use the foodsaver on the newer pack I have.

plllog, so you saw their wrapper, it's a kind of waxy plastic but it's a loose wrapping and mine was sitting around in the cupboard for a few years.

Now I wonder if it is some chemical change that happens that is offensive to my tastebuds. Possibly, something changes when it's been around awhile? Admitting some of this is over my head, but I think I get the gist of it.

Not sure if it's related, but I can also taste brownies made from mix because of a similar taste, and same with bread made in bread machines. I think it's the lining of the bread basket. But most of the time, plastic wrap or coatings on baking pans aren't something that affects the taste for me, so go figure.

It seems we all have our sensitivities to certain tastes, but I'm leaning towards not using baking chocolate in recipes for a while.

aziline, a chocolate tour could be in my future. I'll be sure to try the Go Aggie! bar. :)