The host opens with: "If you love white chocolate, I hate to break it to you. You're not eating chocolate. Besides the absence of cocoa solids, the reputation stems from the fact that white chocolate products often contain such additives as palm oil and other fillers, plus an excess of sweeteners. But a growing number of specialty chocolate companies are now giving the same attention to white chocolate as dark or milk chocolate, and trying to highlight the ways it can showcase flavor.
A cocoa bean is made up of roughly equal parts cocoa butter and cacao nibs. Cocoa butter is what gives chocolate its rich mouthfeel, and the nibs hold most of the distinctive smell and taste. Absent of nibs, "white chocolate is basically just sweet fat," says Clay Gordon, creator of the Chocolate Life website, "with a melt that is unencumbered by the nonfat cocoa solids, or cocoa powder. White chocolate, on the other hand, has to have a cocoa butter content of at least 20 percent and does not require the inclusion of nibs.
Pastry chef and cookbook author David Lebovitz, an avowed white chocolate fan, disputes the idea that it's not really chocolate. So I think it's okay to group white chocolate in with the rest of the variety of things made from cacao beans, since they all have the same base.
The story is that it was a way to use up excess milk powder that had been produced for World War I and was no longer in demand. White chocolate is also a way to use up extra cocoa butter that is extracted from the cocoa bean when making cocoa powder. This fat is the most highly regarded byproduct of chocolate production, valued not only in chocolate but cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. Cocoa butter is typically filtered, bleached with clay minerals that absorb color components and deodorized, through steam distillation or solvents that reduce the volatile compounds that contribute to its aroma.
It remains stable at room temperature and is rich in saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids. Because of these qualities, the cost of cocoa butter more than doubled between and , and it's why many large-scale manufacturers substitute a portion of their deodorized cocoa butter with fillers such as vegetable oil that significantly reduce cost.
The rise in price also led some makers to expand their efforts to produce quality white chocolate. What it is, Yuh says, is a canvas for other flavors, offering "surprising breadth and utility. This includes white chocolate made with non-deodorized cocoa butter that retains cocoa aromas popularized by the Venezuelan company El Rey and chocolates made with goats' milk and nondairy milks, plus a wide variety of spices and other inclusions: Thai curry shrimp from Taiwan's Fu Wan Chocolate; rosemary and sea salt from Forte in Seattle; mango, chile and lime from Toronto's Soma Chocolatemaker; turmeric and pomegranate from the Violet Chocolate Company in the Canadian province of Alberta; and white chocolate infused with Mosaic beer hops from Somerville Chocolate in Massachusetts.
This can also be said of German chocolate maker Georgia Ramon, which features such white chocolate combinations as organic kale with mustard and salted Sicilian almonds with broccoli. Castronovo, who includes roasted strawberries, raspberries and blueberries in her white chocolate bars, agrees: "White chocolate is a good medium in which you can play creatively with flavors and texture.
So what should curious chocolate lovers look for in the white stuff? The main nutritional consideration in craft white chocolate, however, is the cocoa butter. So you could say that cocoa butter self-regulates itself, insofar as affecting the heart. The unhealthy aspects of white chocolate are basically the added sugars, both the refined sugar and the lactose, as the high caloric value of the product.
You can tell just by looking at the nutrition facts of the bar what percentage of the bar is sugar— just divide the grams of sugar per serving by the total number of grams in a serving— and after that, enjoy in moderation. While I always advocate lobbying your local craft chocolate maker for any cacao-based products you desire, I know most makers are too small to expand with any haste.
The following are my best tips for finding real white chocolate anywhere you go:. So what is the best white chocolate out there? Also, check out caramelized white chocolate. Each of the three main variables at play— cocoa butter, milk powder, and sugar— can be manipulated in some way to yield a unique result. When it comes to milk powders there are even more variables at play, including plant-based milk alternatives like oat or coconut, and less common powdered dairy, like powdered cream cheese or powdered buttermilk.
Traditional refined sugars are slowly being swapped out for lower glycemic impact sweeteners like date sugar, erythritol, and monk fruit. But now there are also makers using fruit powders in place of either sugar or milk, and a bevy of unique regional inclusions added flavoring elements finding their place in homemade white chocolate.
These days, white chocolate is produced in factories around the world, with Nestle still leading global sales. Sign in Register. News Guardian. Recent queries. Send a query. Lucky dip. Any answers? Nooks and crannies. Semantic enigmas. The body beautiful.
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