Valentine's Day is fast approaching, and of course in my mind, Valentine's Day equals chocolate. Whether your significant other buys it, you buy it, your family buys it, or your friend buys it - chocolate is clearly what should be on everyone's mind right now. And not just any chocolate. My preference is the darker the better. I'll take an 85% bar of chocolate any day. Some people don't share my superior taste. In fact, some even dare to say that white chocolate is - gasp - an option. Perhaps for some, since they believe white chocolate should be included in the chocolate family. Although they share the same name, white chocolate and actual chocolate are actually not the same type of sweet. Chocolate is chocolate. White chocolate is candy.
White chocolate is called chocolate because it is made with cocoa butter, powdered milk and sugar. Yet since this candy does not contain any cocoa solids, only the cocoa butter, it technically isn't chocolate at all. As Bon Appetit says, "Though white chocolate contains extracted cocoa butter, it lacks the component that defines real chocolate. Joy of Baking says that since white chocolate doesn't contain chocolate liquor, it's not really white chocolate. Then, of course, there's a difference between real white chocolate and fake (or what I like to call poser) white chocolate. Real white chocolate uses cocoa butter. Fake white chocolate uses vegetable oil. Of course, white chocolate is a derivative of chocolate, since the cocoa butter comes from the cocoa bean. Yet Merriam-Webster's definition of derivative is a "substance that can be made from another substance". Using that logic, is a cake eggs since eggs go in a cake? I think not.
* This Op Ed may or may not have been written as a way to win an argument. In the comments below, voice your opinion!
I had no idea that white chocolate wasn't chocolate! In any case, I much prefer actual candy to either. Gummy bears, mmmmm....
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