Interesting facts about white chocolate

white chocolate

White chocolate is a type of chocolate.

It is made from cocoa butter, sugar and milk solids.

White chocolate may include additional flavorings, such as vanilla.

It is prized for its rich texture and delicate flavour.

White chocolate is pale ivory color, and lacks many of the compounds found in milk and dark chocolates.

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Technically, white chocolate is not a chocolate — and it doesn’t really taste like one—because it doesn’t contain chocolate solids. When cocoa beans are removed from their pods, fermented, dried, roasted, cracked open, and their shells discarded, what results is a nib. Chocolate nibs are ground into a paste called chocolate liquor. Chocolate liquor can be separated into cocoa solids, which provide the flavor, and cocoa butter, which is the fat. Though white chocolate contains extracted cocoa butter, it lacks the component that defines real chocolate.

Because it contains no cocoa solids, white chocolate contains only trace amounts of the stimulants theobromine and caffeine.

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While white chocolate contains a good amount of calcium, it isn’t a healthy food because it doesn’t supply significant doses of other essential nutrients to make up for the high calorie, sugar and fat content. You can splurge on white chocolate occasionally without harming your health, but don’t make it part of your healthy eating plan.

The texture of white chocolate is notably fattier than dark chocolate and because it is essentially sweetened fat it is very much higher in calories than a dark chocolate, at least twice and up to three times higher, depending on which chocolate is being compared.

There are about 540 calories in 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of white chocolate.

The melting point of cocoa butter, the only cocoa bean component of white chocolate, is high enough to keep white chocolate solid at room temperature, as with milk chocolate and dark chocolate.

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The history of white chocolate is largely unclear, but the general consensus, is that Nestlé was the first to develop white chocolate commercially in 1936 in Switzerland. The story is that it was a way to use up excess milk powder that had been produced for World War I and was no longer in demand.”

From the 1940s to the 1990s, Nestlé produced a white chocolate bar with almond pieces called Alpine White that was marketed throughout the United States and Canada.

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Hershey began mass production of white Kisses in the 1990s, a product that diversified during the early 21st century to include a chocolate white-dark swirl Kiss called the Hug.

Until 2002, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) forbade white chocolate even to be called chocolate. Eventually, the FDA modified its standards of identity, allowing white chocolate to be called chocolate as long as it contains a minimum of 20 per cent cocoa butter.

White chocolate is a good way to use up extra cocoa butter that is extracted from the cocoa bean when making cocoa powder. This fat is the most highly regarded byproduct of chocolate production, valued not only in chocolate but cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.

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Many famous candy bars and candies are made also from white chocolate including: Kit Kat Crisp Wafers in White Chocolate Candy Bar, M&M’s White Chocolate Singles Size Candy, White Chocolate Reese’s Cups, Snickers Bar White Limited Edition, Twix Bar White Limited Edition and Toblerone White chocolate.

French company Valrhona started selling caramelized white chocolate in 2006.

Other colored chocolates are made from dyed white chocolate.

National White Chocolate Day in the United States is on September 22.