What Exactly Is White Chocolate?

One of the most often asked inquiries I hear is if white chocolate is genuine chocolate. To this question, I always answer yes in two ways: legally and subjectively. Yet, as the notion of white chocolate gets stretched, blurred, and called into question at every step and in every corner of the globe, I’ve been forced to face how fluid my own limitations are.

White chocolate, for example, has just two legally needed ingredients: cocoa butter and dairy milk. Nevertheless, most websites include sugar, vanilla, and lecithin as needed components; this is like to claiming that salad isn’t salad unless it has ranch dressing on top. Just because something is traditionally made one way does not imply that it is the only way; consider ruby chocolate.

The next generation of white chocolate is everything but white. So we’re delving into the realities of white chocolate this month, including its definition, future, and finest attributes.

Legally, what is white chocolate?

What you may not understand is that chocolate has a legal definition, or rather, legal requirements that must be satisfied before a product can be referred to as chocolate. Each of the three forms of chocolate has a distinct legal requirement for cacao and dairy content, which varies by country and area (the EU versus Canada versus New Zealand, for example). So, first, let’s examine what white chocolate is comprised of.

To be lawfully sold as white chocolate in the United States, a product must have at least 20% cocoa fat, at least 3.5% milk fat, and at least 14% total milk solids; it cannot include more than 55% nutritive carbohydrate sweetener. In other words, a hypothetical American white chocolate bar may include 55% sugar, 20% cocoa butter, 17.5% milk powder, and 7.5% something else. The last 25% is often made up of so-called fillers such as lecithin, flavorings, whey products, and, in certain cases, additional powdered milk.

White chocolate has no cocoa solids or chocolate liquid; it is entirely made of squeezed cocoa butter. Cocoa butter is the most costly component in white chocolate, because to its significant worth in the cosmetics business. Consequently, when mass-produced bars, such as Cadbury white chocolate, are formulated for the American market, the very minimal proportion of cacao is included, allowing them to term these bars white chocolate.

When they do not satisfy these minimums, items are merely renamed rather than modified or removed off the market. Check out Hershey’s Exceptional Dark Caramelized Crème. Hershey’s Gold and Hershey’s Cookies and Crème. When you look at the ingredients list, you’ll see that the term chocolate has been replaced with the name Hersheys, and the inference of dairy with the usage of creme is an egregious distortion.

Short rant over Hershey’s White Chocolate

If I didn’t know any better, I’d suppose Hersheys had exited the chocolate business entirely. Consider their Premier White Vanilla 1M Baking Chips, which have the following ingredients: sugar; skim milk; hydrogenated vegetable oil [palm kernel oil; soybean oil; palm oil]; palm kernel oil; contains 2% or less of: artificial flavor; lecithin (soy); salt. The chips contain no cacao beans and are not legally stated to be chocolate, yet all of the comments on the product page rave about how delicious the sweet white chocolate is.

Thus, given this conflict, is Hershey’s white chocolate really white chocolate, given that it contains no cocoa? No, no, it isn’t. Yet, since Hersheys never explicitly labels many of these goods as chocolate on their packaging, they are within their legal rights to tarnish the good reputation of white chocolate for future generations. Even Cadbury white chocolate is called into doubt when its components are sourced outside of the EU and North America.

White chocolate has come to be associated with a sweet milky flavor that tastes more like vanilla extract than any cocoa bean in existence. If you’ve ever cooked anything, you’ll immediately realize that the fat is what provides the taste, and the same is true with cacao. Cocoa butter contains a natural chocolatey scent that is chemically eliminated before mass-market white chocolate is made, but is praised in handmade white chocolates.

The issue is that most mass-market businesses, such as Cadbury, Mondelez, and Hershey’s, utilize so low-quality cacao that they virtually burn it to standardize the taste, and burnt-smelling cocoa butter won’t do anything for its milky flavor.

White chocolate is it vegan?

Since the legal definitions of white chocolate and milk chocolate both entail the inclusion of a particular amount of dairy, anything manufactured using a milk replacement is not legally white chocolate. This is another often asked issue, and the quick answer is that white chocolate is not vegan. There are vegan white chocolate choices available; they just cannot be called chocolate. That is where the catch-22 for environmentally concerned and

Therefore, whereas established candy firms utilize word association to infer chocolate-like characteristics, vegan handmade chocolate companies employ twice the cacao butter, half the sugar, and none of the milk, and their lack of brand recognition encourages them to be even more creative with naming. Fortunately, as Julia Zotter said in the milk alternative edition of my podcast, these smaller businesses do have cards to play.

Their ingredient lists are not just full of healthy foods, but they also tend to source ethically-farmed cacao that is well-processed and acquired at a premium. Because of their scale, businesses may shift their focus toward or away from certain elements when it makes sense, and they are not required to explain their decisions to shareholders. Companies may also highlight their connections with cocoa producers, rather than committing to ethics just when it benefits them.

I recommend Solkiki Chocolate, Charm School Chocolate, and Pascha Chocolate for wonderful vegan white chocolate (not a fully vegan company, but with great allergen-free vegan chocolates). Each of these firms makes delicious plant-based white chocolate, the majority of which is prepared with coconut milk powder instead of dairy.

How Dangerous Is White Chocolate?

I’m not going to lie and call white chocolate the next superfood, but the news isn’t all terrible. As long as you’re eating true white chocolate with no strange oils or flavorings, there are just three ingredients to consider: cocoa butter, sugar, and milk powder (sometimes soy lecithin). Although we all know that refined sugar is bad for us, milk powder contains calcium, potassium, and a trace of protein.

The cocoa butter, on the other hand, is the most important nutritional factor in handmade white chocolate. Cocoa butter is composed of three kinds of fat: stearic, palmitic, and oleic fatty acids, with a trace of linoleic acid. Palmitic acid is known to elevate LDL (bad) cholesterol levels, however it only accounts for around 25% of cocoa butter, while the other three fatty acids in cocoa butter actually reduce those bad cholesterol levels.

Hence, in terms of its effect on the heart, cocoa butter may be said to self-regulate. The harmful characteristics of white chocolate are mostly the added sugars, both refined sugar and lactose, as well as the product’s high caloric content. White chocolate does not have many health advantages, but you may locate less harmful white chocolates by seeking for cocoa percentages of 40% or more (which is very unusual) and bars that substitute part of the regular refined sugar with a different sweetener.

By checking at the nutrition data of the bar will tell you what percentage cocoa butter and what percentage sugar are within. Simply divide the grams of sugar per serving by the total number of grams in a serving and then enjoy in moderation.

Where Can I Get Genuine White Chocolate?

Although I always recommend pushing your local handmade chocolate maker for any cacao-based items you wish, I understand that most producers are too tiny to grow quickly. As a result, I believe it is critical to be aware of where to purchase handmade chocolate online as well as how to determine the value of any random white chocolate bars you may come across in the wild. These are my top ideas for getting authentic white chocolate everywhere you go:

• Remember that the only ingredients needed in white chocolate are cocoa butter (also called cacao butter), sugar, and milk. Some bars will be made with a milk alternative, but either way, a plain white chocolate bar shouldn’t be made up of more than five ingredients, none of them being added oils.
• Avoid anything made with hydrogenated oil, palm oil, or natural or artificial flavors.
• Vanilla and soy (or sunflower) lecithin are the main additives in white chocolate. While not necessarily bad, they are questionable choices if a maker is already using high quality cocoa butter. So even though lecithins and vanilla aren’t really factors or indicators of good white chocolate, I’d more closely analyze plain white chocolates which contain them.
• Look for a pale yellow or ivory color in the chocolate; cocoa butter naturally has a slight yellow tint to it, so if the chocolate is pure white, then it was chemically treated in some way.
• There should be a mild chocolaty aroma to the product, thanks to the good flavor development of the fat during proper post-harvest processing.
• Expect to pay at least $4 a bar for good quality white chocolate, and even more if it’s a single origin craft chocolate.

So, which white chocolate is the best? It is entirely up to you to decide. Some of my favorites are created by Akessons Chocolate, Pump Street Chocolate, Omnom Chocolate, SoMA Chocolate, Zotter Chocolate, and Monsoon Chocolate. I advise you to try new things and not be put off by unpleasant white chocolate experiences in the past. Look into caramelized white chocolate as well.

White Chocolate’s Future

To be honest, I haven’t been asked this question very often, but if you’ve read this far, it’s definitely of interest to you. As you can see, white chocolate is more than simply a lovely vanilla-scented delicacy; it has actual substance and potential to develop. According to what I’ve seen over the past several years, the future of white chocolate is in the hands of artisan chocolate makers, not as the sole manufacturers of exquisite white chocolate, but as tastemakers for where the flavors are going.

Each of the three primary factors at work, cocoa butter, milk powder, and sugar, may be modified in some manner to produce a distinct outcome. Changing the cocoa butter in any manner eliminates the one element that lends validity to the term “white chocolate,” although it may still be adjusted in percentage, origin, conche time, and so on. When it comes to milk powders, there are even more choices to consider, such as plant-based milk substitutes such as oat or coconut, as well as less typical powdered dairy products such as powdered cream cheese or powdered buttermilk.

Conventional refined sugars are gradually being replaced with lower glycemic sweeteners such as date sugar, erythritol, and monk fruit. But lately, manufacturers are utilizing fruit powders instead of sugar or milk, and a slew of distinctive regional inclusions (additional flavour ingredients) are making their way into handcrafted white chocolate. It’s becoming more fashionable to learn how to create white chocolate at home these days.

So, even if you haven’t yet jumped on the bandwagon of homemade chocolate, sugar-free white chocolate, and vegan alternatives to everything, know that white chocolate is not only genuine chocolate, but it can also be tasty.

White Chocolate Frequently Asked Questions