Even though I'm currently living on a rather severe budget, I still wanted something (cheap) to go with my homemade bread buns. After some thought, I settled on Nutella. Not only did it satisfy my requirements, it was also chocolate! Total winner!
Of course being on a budget, I didn't just waltz down to Walmart and pick up Nutella, since name brands tends to be on the pricier side. I ended up with the Walmart brand Great Value Chocolate Hazelnut Spread -- almost 40% cheaper than Nutella and I wasn't going to be fussy about any difference in taste (honestly just having that much chocolate made me pretty happy).
Now a third of the way through the jar, I got to thinking... What might satisfy my chocolate-on-bread craving and be even cheaper?
The first thing I discovered was Walmart.ca didn't have nearly enough precise subcategories. You can't even find baking chocolate (slide 2) in its own category, for example. For the slide presented I actually ended up searching for the most prominent baking chocolate brand sold at Walmart: Chipits.
I don't know that much about baking chocolate or what makes them special, but surely something that's merely an ingredient instead of a ready product like a chocolate spread should be cheaper, right?
Nope.
Next I looked up chocolate bars (slide 3) and wow they are even more expensive than Nutella. Like lots more expensive. Next time you have a craving for chocolate, maybe grab a jar of chocolate hazelnut spread and just have a generous tablespoon.
Even if baking chocolate or ready-to-eat chocolate snacks had been at a comparable price to a chocolate spread, there was still the inconvenience of using them as such. So my next idea was looking at something chocolatey, yet spreadable -- pudding (slide 4).
Surprise surprise, price per 100g was really good. Although to be fair, the taste might just not be comparable to something as chocolatey as a hazelnut chocolate spread. Plus air exposure might make the pudding kind of icky. Which wouldn't normally be an issue if you slurped up a cup of pudding all at once, but we were intending to use it over time as a spread.
But pudding gave me an idea. I thought back literally decades to my youth when vendors peddling ice boxes filled with ice cream would sell that ice cream to kids not in cones, but sandwiched in slices of bread. And the price was amazingly even better than pudding (slide 5). And depending on what you buy, the price per unit could come in at half the price of even Walmart's cheap store brand chocolate hazelnut spread.
Ice cream presents its own challenges compared to a spread of course. For instance if you try to use it on freshly baked bread that still quite hot, you can expect it to turn into a disgusting mud. chocolate spreads also melt, but not quite so quickly into something gross. But other than that, just choose your flavour and you're good to go -- and ice cream sure does come in various flavours!
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