How is White Chocolate Made?
3 min reading time
First things first, the real reason people choose to debate the authenticity of white chocolate is because unlike dark and milk chocolate, it actually doesn't contain any cocoa powder. The average cocoa bean is made up of roughly equal parts of cocoa butter and cocoa nibs. These nibs hold most of the distinct chocolatey taste and smell.
While the Food and Drug Administration require that a Milk or dark chocolate bar be made up of at least 10% cocoa mass (cocoa nibs + cocoa fat inherent to the cocoa bean) in order to be considered chocolate, white chocolate plays by its own rules, requiring at least 20% of cocoa butter content, without mention of nibs at all. But this cocoa butter is what adds that rich and smooth mouthfeel to white chocolate that we love so much, so who can really complain?
Where did white chocolate Come From?
Cocoa beans were first used to make a warm, bitter drink by the Mayan and Aztec civilizations hundreds of years prior to catching on in Spain and then Britain in the 1700's. Sugar was eventually added to the beverage to make it more enjoyable to drink and give us the type of flavor we recognize today. It wasn't until 1936 that Nestle developed the first white chocolate products commercially in Switzerland. It's said that it was created as a way to use up the excess milk powder that was produced for World War 1 and was no longer in demand.
So How is White Chocolate Made?
Today, white chocolate is a great way to make use of extra cocoa butter, which is the well-regarded byproduct of chocolate production. Cocoa butter is typically filtered, bleached with clay minerals that absorb color, and purified through steam distillation to help it achieve that pleasant aroma. And since it's also rich in saturated and monosaturated fatty acids, the cost of cocoa butter has doubled over the last decade. For this reason, many manufacturers result to substitute fillers like vegetable oil to save money on production. So it's true, not all chocolate, or even white chocolate, is created equally! (And that's why only the finest brands will do on our site!)
To break it down simply, white chocolate is made of essentially five ingredients: cocoa butter, powdered milk, sugar, vanilla and lecithin. The cocoa butter is added to a double boiler. As it slowly begins to melt, the powdered sugar and powdered milk are combined in a separate, dry mixture. This mixture is slowly added to the melting cocoa butter, and once it is all thoroughly melted, the vanilla is added with constant stirring until the mixture has no lumps. Then voila! The mixture can either be poured into molds, drizzled on pastries or used for dipping!
As people continue to debate white chocolate's place in the chocolate family, we'll just continue to enjoy it with all our favorite desserts. It's delicate, creamy qualities make it the perfect pairing to so many unique flavors, so stop scratching your head, and join us in trying them all! We can help you when you are shopping for bulk white chocolate.