Spotted on Buzzfeed is this relatively interesting fact:
White Chocolate Is A Big, Fat Lie
It isn’t chocolate. It isn’t even Facebook friends with real chocolate. It isn’t even a LinkedIn 3rd connection with real chocolate.
Its main ingredient is cocoa butter, a pale yellow vegetable fat that comes from a cocoa bean but isn’t chocolate.
Cocoa butter gets squished out of cocoa nibs when real chocolate is being made, like this:
cocoa nibs
1) So you’ve got ripe cocoa pods that are full of cocoa beans (top row, left). 2) The beans are removed from the pods, fermented, dried, roasted (top row, right). 3) They’re cracked open, their shells are discarded and what results are cocoa nibs (second row, left). 4) The nibs are ground into a paste called chocolate liquor (second row, right). 5) Chocolate liquor can be separated into cocoa butter and cocoa solids using a fancy press (bottom row, left). The solids provide the flavor and color that we think of for dark chocolate. Read more about the science of making chocolate inWired.
Cocoa butter doesn’t taste good on its own, so we add milk solids, milk fat, sugar, and vanilla to it to turn it into white chocolate.
ShutterstockStill, the quality of the cocoa butter — and how the cocoa beans and nibs were processed — is an important factor in the quality of white chocolate.
In 2004, the FDA established a “Standard of Identity” for white chocolate that set a minimum percentage of cocoa butter, milk solids, and milk fat, and a maximum allowance of sweeteners.
The FDA said to be called white chocolate, the candy must have at least 20% cocoa butter, 14% milk solids, and 3.5% milk fat — and no more than 55% sugar or other sweeteners. Vanilla is added for flavor, and a fatty substance called lecithin is in there as an emulsifier. The FDA’s actions were partly in response to petitions from Hershey Foods and the Chocolate Manufacturers Association of America, who wanted to stop manufacturers from making imposter white chocolate using only vegetable oil or other cheaper fats instead of cocoa butter. Learn more about the FDA definition of white chocolate here.
It’s still kind of hard to buy good white chocolate — most of them are the super sweet, gross version that people hate on — but there actually are amazing white chocolates in this world.
See Saveur’s picks here along with a great article on the development and popularity of white chocolate.
In general, good white chocolate will be ivory, not white.
If it’s too white, that means instead of cocoa butter, vegetable oil or some other fat was used. However, some manufacturers get around the color problem by adding artificial color, which you can tell from the ingredient list.
High-quality white chocolate is especially important if you intend to coat something.
Not to name names, but to name names — I couldn’t get these pumpkin-feta truffles made for Halloween last year with Lindt chocolate. It wasn’t good at coating stuff, so I had to buy Green and Black’s.
Now that you know what’s up, here are 13 reasons to get over your hard feelings about white chocolate’s lies:
Two-Ingredient Strawberry White Chocolate Popsicles
White Chocolate Cake Batter Krispies
Credits:Buzzfeed
Okay, to be honest – I really didn’t know that white chocolate doesn’t even contain any chocolate at all – did you?
Actually not a big fan of white chocolate too because it’s really too sweet, even for me. But there’s one I do like though, hehe.
Hershey’s Cookies N Creme anyone? XD
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♥ mitsueki
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I agree. In terms of white chocolate, I only like Hershey’s Cookies N Creme. I’m more of a dark chocolate fanatic anyway. Nasty surprise! One of my mates’ a hardcore white chocolate lover D:
eww! i cant stand dark chocolate though because it’s too bitter for me. white is too sweet, so normal chocolat eis great for me. hehe! and yepp, my boss is a diehard white choco fan too – gonna break the news to her. HAHA! meanwhile, noticed that you recently moved to wordpress.org – won’t you lose your stats? ;/
Yup, I did. Yeah, I even lost some of my followers! Bummer, though, having my own domain allows nuffnang ads. Haha, I guess I’ll take one step at a time, try to build up traffic 🙂