We consider D7 brane probes embedded in deformed AdS₅ × S⁵ supergravity backgrounds which are non-supersymmetric in the interior. In the context of the generalised AdS/CFT correspondence, these setups are dual to QCD-like theories with fundamental matter which display chiral symmetry breaking by a quark condensate. Evaluating the D7 action for a surface instanton configuration gives rise to an effective potential for the scalar Higgs vev in the dual field theory. We calculate this potential for two specific supergravity backgrounds. For a metric due to Constable and Myers, we find that the potential is asymptotically bounded by a 1/Q⁴ behaviour and has a minimum at zero vev. For the Yang-Mills^* background we find that the Higgs potential scales quadratically with the Higgs vev. This corresponds to a canonical mass term and the embedding is again stable.