As we approach the holiday season, I lie awake in fear of one ingredient that spreads like the plague. I’m not referring to the omnipresent pumpkin spice, but am instead thinking of a flavor that hides, waiting with its teeth and claws bared, in holiday drinks and desserts across the globe. I’m speaking of… white chocolate. Just saying its name makes my stomach curl in on itself.
If chocolate is King of All Things Sweet, then white chocolate is like its weird sixth cousin, twice removed, that pretends to be royalty even though it is most definitely not. I mean, using the word “chocolate” to describe white chocolate is despicable. Because white chocolate is basically a dark smudge on the entire chocolate family. And I have proof!
Real chocolate is made up of roasted and ground cacao beans. Cacao is made up of equal parts cocoa butter and cacao nibs, according to The Washington Post. White chocolate, on the other hand, does not contain cacao nibs — and those are exactly what gives chocolate its deliciously rich taste and scent. The FDA even states that chocolate must contain at least 10 percent cocoa mass (which is made up of cocoa fat and nibs directly from the bean — not cocoa butter!!). In fact, the only reason white chocolate is considered chocolate is because the Chocolate Manufacturers Association and Hershey’s complained about it back in 2004. 😑
Basically, IT’S ALL A LIE. As reported by the FDA itself, “White chocolate is the solid or semiplastic food prepared by mixing and grinding cocoa butter with one or more of the optional dairy ingredients listed … and one or more optional nutritive carbohydrate sweeteners. ”
That’s right. White chocolate is just cocoa butter mixed with “optional” dairy ingredients and sweeteners. In what world does that sound like chocolate?
The answer: it does not.
iStock/So Yummy
White chocolate doesn’t taste like chocolate. You can tell that companies make it extra sweet to compensate for this fact, so I feel like I’m eating a Bath & Body Works body lotion every time it touches my tastebuds. And don’t even get me started on the aftertaste, which is the equivalent of wet chalk.
White chocolate doesn’t smell like chocolate. It smells like a cotton candy-covered seat in a Ferris wheel. It gives off the scent of a dessert that is far too sweet to make up for the fact that it’s dry and sad. White chocolate reminds me of scented candle wax — it’s just not natural.
White chocolate doesn’t even look like chocolate. Just because you stamp a Hershey’s logo on something doesn’t make it chocolate. I mean, isn’t it funny that you rarely see Hershey’s selling the glue-like white chocolate on its own? Instead, what you see in grocery store aisles is their Cookies ‘n’ Creme bars, which contain — you guessed it! — “crunchy chocolate cookie bits.” Because they know that white chocolate can’t stand on its own!
I hate white chocolate so much that if I hear someone ordering a White Chocolate Mocha in line at Starbucks, I have to turn away and pretend it’s not happening.
I mean, why would you have white chocolate when you can have actual chocolate? Choosing between the two on a menu completely boggles my mind. Do you not realize that you’re drinking straight-up cocoa butter that’s sweetened to fool you?!
Sorry, not sorry, but white chocolate will never fool me. And don’t you dare add its chocolate chips into my brownies, or so help me!
