White chocolate is not actually chocolate at all – it’s simply the cacao butter that is leftover from the process of making chocolate, and often fashioned into Milky Bars or those white chocolate mice that you may have enjoyed as a child. Not everyone is a fan as white chocolate is very sweet and some find it quite sickly. However, other people love the taste, and it’s not as bitter as dark chocolate.
Keep white chocolate away from pets – although it does not contain the same toxin as dark and milk chocolate, it’s too high in fat and could cause tummy upsets, if accidentally ingested. For chocolate recipes, never sweeten with xylitol near pets, it’s lethal.
Vegan White Chocolate (Addicted to Dates) is a simple 5-ingredient recipe by a talented classically-trained Irish baker. It’s made with cacao, coconut and cashew butter, along with vanilla, sea salt and a little powdered icing sugar (Suma and Wholesome! are good brands in the UK and US respectively, as they don’t contain egg). Use it to make:
Vegan White Chocolate Pistachio Tart (Addicted to Dates) features an almond pistachio shortbread crust, with a creamy filling of vegan white chocolate and pistachio.
Vegan Blackberry White Chocolate ‘Magnum’ Ice Creams (Addicted to Dates) are fruity and creamy, and far nicer than the commercial versions bought in shops.
Vegan White Chocolate Flan Cake (Carlo Cao) is a recipe by a talented Swiss-Italian chef.
Be Careful Buying ‘Compostable Packaging’ Bars
If buying vegan white chocolate, compostable packaging sounds good, but most is from eucalyptus trees, which are flammable so planting too many can cause wildfires in Portugal and Australia. So try to find brands packed in paper packaging, that you can recycle.
Commercial white chocolate was first invented by the Swiss food company Nestle (along with Nike, Coca-Cola and McDonald’s, almost the world’s most boycotted companies, the world’s most boycotted company), the first bar being sold back in 1930. The stable cocoa butter means white chocolate has a long storage life, but does absorb odours well, so keep it away from onions!
Probably the world’s best-known white chocolate is Milky Bar, often advertised on TV. But this bar is a cheap mix of milk powders, refined sugar, cocoa butter, emulsifier and various vegetable fats (including palm oil, its unsustainable use is leading to the destroyed habitats of orangutans and other endangered creatures). Even the more upmarket Milka bar is just a blend of refined sugar and cocoa fat, with defattened milk powder, whey powder, more milk fat and emulsifier.
