Not Hershey's, Not Ghirardelli: The Best Chocolate Syrup Comes From This Grocery Brand

A generous drizzle of chocolate syrup is one way to instantly upgrade an ice cream sundae, but it can also be used to make quick chocolate milks, rich mochas, and fruit dips. You can even stir it into buttercream to create chocolate frosting, pour it over a freshly-baked cake as a glaze, or squeeze it onto a bowl of breakfast oats. While Hershey's and Ghirardelli are popular brands, they surprisingly don't make the best of this tasty treat. According to our ranking of 10 chocolate syrup brands, it was actually an underdog that reigned as the ultimate champ: Trader Joe's organic Midnight Moo chocolate syrup.

We loved this product for three reasons. Firstly, its flavor easily beat the other contenders hands down — rich, creamy, and decadent, this T.J.'s syrup was on point from the first taste. The ingredients include cane sugar, water, cocoa powder, organic tapioca syrup, salt, and lactic acid, which all combine to produce a wonderfully chocolatey quality and pourable consistency. Secondly, the syrup is great value for money as it costs $3.99 (given that chocolate syrup is concentrated in flavor, a 15.8-ounce bottle of Midnight Moo goes a long way). Finally, we liked the fact that the recipe didn't contain any weird chemicals or additives. The core ingredients are organic, and there's nothing unusual listed in there. In contrast, the last-place finisher in our taste test — Berryhill chocolate-flavored syrup from Aldi — contains high fructose corn syrup as the first ingredient as well as artificial flavor.

If you're wondering whether chocolate syrup should always be refrigerated, we reckon it's best stored in the fridge versus the pantry. Midnight Moo chocolate syrup says it should be refrigerated after opening right on the front of the bottle. Although it doesn't contain any dairy products, keeping it chilled will help it last longer (unopened bottles can be stored safely in the pantry). Some shoppers on Reddit have complained that storing the syrup in the fridge makes it hard.

If you find that your chocolate syrup has become too solid to pour straight from the bottle, place it in a water bath to warm it up gently. After a couple of minutes, the sauce should be back to its pourable consistency, ready to top a banana split, a serving of waffles, or a stack of fluffy buttermilk pancakes.