This one could easily make the top 3 most divisive questions of all time. Is it chocolatine or pain au chocolat? Is Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy or Brittany? Is white chocolate real chocolate?
To this day, all these thorny questions remain unanswered. That’s why – and because we don’t want you racking your brains – we’ve decided to solve this great mystery once and for all: why isn’t white chocolate “real” chocolate? Yes, as you may have guessed, it isn’t exactly chocolate.
So what actually is chocolate?
They say the simplest things are often the best, and chocolate is no exception. Making good dark chocolate is really quite simple. You need: cocoa mass, made by roasting, crushing and grinding the beans; cocoa butter, which also comes from the beans; sugar and… that’s it, nothing more! Although adding lots of love is always essential.
For milk chocolate, it’s the same recipe plus – you’ll never guess – milk!
In both types of chocolate, it’s the cocoa nibs (pieces of roasted, crushed cocoa bean) that give chocolate its bitter, cocoa-rich taste. Thanks to the nibs, chocolate gets that distinctive flavour you simply can’t find anywhere else. For white chocolate, the process is rather different.
Why isn’t white chocolate really chocolate?
Unlike its milk and dark siblings, it has one particular feature that rules it out of the debate straight away: there’s no cocoa mass in sight. So what is white chocolate? Cocoa butter, milk and sugar. Without nibs, white chocolate tastes very different and much less chocolatey. But it’s the cocoa butter that gives it a texture and shape similar to milk or dark chocolate.
But if it’s that obvious, why is white chocolate allowed to be called “chocolate”? Quite simply because it was first sold in Switzerland, by a chocolate brand. It was born in the land of our Swiss friends in 1930, when a chocolate maker wanted to use up its surplus cocoa butter. The brand came up with a recipe for making chocolate without cocoa mass. Contrary to popular belief, white chocolate contains little cholesterol, but more sugar (up to 55%!) than dark or milk chocolate.
