Today is National White Chocolate Day, so here are ten things you might not know about white chocolate:
What is white chocolate, exactly? White chocolate is a confectionery made of Sugar, Milk, and cocoa butter, but no cocoa solids. It's essentially milk chocolate devoid of Cocoa solids.
The lack of cocoa solids has led some to claim that white chocolate isn’t Chocolate at all. Others argue that it is indeed chocolate, because it is made from the cacao plant as grinding the nibs produces chocolate liquor, which is then separated into two different products: cocoa solids (used to make darker chocolate) and cocoa butter (used to make the white stuff).
The first recipes for white chocolate published in 1869, 1871, and 1872 would have produced a more chewy confection than white chocolate as we know it today. Henry Blakely's 1871 recipe calls for "white sugar, rice flour, arrowroot powder, Vanilla, cocoa butter, and gum arabic" boiled in water.
Swiss chocolatier Daniel Peter is responsible for the recipe for white chocolate as we know it now. He developed his recipe in 1875.
White chocolate wasn’t well received by everyone. In 1916, a confectioner named T. B. McRoberts actually seemed quite horrified by the very idea. He wrote about the rumour that the Swiss had invented a snow White chocolate to reflect the Snow capped Mountains in Switzerland. “I never saw snow-white chocolate, but I would rather see than eat it,” he wrote. This was probably down to assumptions he’d made about how it was produced. The only way T.B. Roberts could imagine such a thing could be produced was by taking darker chocolate and bleaching the cocoa elements out. He envisaged that to do that, they would have to use Chlorine gas, “the "poison gas" of the trenches” which would not only have health implications but would ruin the flavour as well.
Talking of flavour, beware of keeping your white chocolate in the Fridge next to things like like Onions or strong Cheese, as white chocolate can absorb these flavours.
The first white chocolate bar was produced by Nestle in 1936. The Milkybar.
Since 1961 the Milkybar adverts have starred a character called The Milky Bar Kid, a blond child in glasses dressed as a cowboy, who says the catchphrase, "The Milkybars are on me!" Until 2010 the Milkybar kids were always boys, but that year the first female Milkybar kid was selected: Hinetaapora Short of New Zealand.
In 2022, white chocolate accounted for about 10 percent of the overall chocolate market.
According to Nestlé, white chocolate was originally created as a way to use excess cocoa butter.
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