Sugar Savvy

Talk about irony. A few short years ago, you wouldn’t have been able to get me to touch a block of white chocolate with a 10-foot pole, and now? Now it’s become an incredible luxury, a culinary diamond in my eyes, and I’ve become completely enamored with its simple existence. Simple indeed, because as I’m sure anyone who’s been around the block with a hunk of chocolate knows that the white stuff has no actual cocoa solids, and thus remains pale as freshly fallen snow. Most manufacturers add dry milk powder and other undesirable elements to their white chips and chunks, to increase shelf stability and augment their supplies of pricey cocoa butter… Or cheap, trans-fatty hydrogenated oils, making for that cheap, waxy crap that turned me away in the first place. Insipid and unctuous at best, it’s no shock that most people would consider shelling out their hard earned cash for this pallid imitator when given a darker option.

Before you flip to the next interesting blog and pass this post over, let me venture a guess that you’ve never had real white chocolate. Made with cocoa butter, this stuff is like the nectar of the gods- Creamy, sweet, with some slightly floral notes in the background. It makes my heart flutter just thinking about it.

This isn’t to say that I’ve developed the end-all, be-all recipe for creating this confection; There’s still plenty of room for improvement, and I would love to hear what others find through their own trials. I would love to keep on experimenting for months, honing it to an exact and simple science… But the trouble with using real cocoa butter, as those money-savvy businesses discovered, is that it costs a small fortune. I’m not going to lie, as this stuff doesn’t come cheap, but for an occasional indulgence, I think you could find it a worthwhile investment.

Still with me? Oh good, thanks for your patience. The first critical step to making the white chocolate is: Finding good cocoa butter. I know, I can’t stop harping about this stuff but it’s really important to pick up high quality, food grade cocoa butter. As a popular ingredient in body lotions and lip balms, some of it comes with fillers and undesirable additives, so shop carefully if you search locally. Next, you’ll want to invest in a decent mold. It doesn’t have to be fancy, and it doesn’t even need to be bar-shaped, you just want somewhere to park your molten chocolate so that it can cool and solidify into a usable shape. Hell, even silicon ice cube trays could work!

After collecting all of the software and hardware, the procedure will seem far easier than that preliminary hunt, so don’t worry, it only gets easier from here.

For the recipe, and ideas with what to do with the finished chocolate, continue on to BitterSweet!