White chocolate is not really chocolate.
- Just like tomatoes aren’t really vegetables.
- Lentils aren’t really beans.
- Koalas aren’t really bears…
Life’s confusing, isn’t it?
Sometimes people are surprised to find not a single white chocolate recipe on this entire chocolate-covered blog. White chocolate has just never been my favorite thing… because I want it to taste like chocolate and am mad when it doesn’t!
Plus, most white chocolate chips aren’t vegan, and they are full of unhealthy trans fats (partially-hydrogenated oils) and artificial ingredients.
Many of you have asked if I could come up with recipes that include chocolate’s paler cousin. But to do that, I first had to figure out how to make my own healthy white chocolate.
Thankfully, it turned out to be really, really easy!
I read up about white chocolate on Wikipedia and checked out the candy bars at the grocery store. Research! (To make research fun, all you have to do is get out of the library and head to the chocolate aisle. Who knew?)
They all consist of the same basic ingredients: cacao butter, milk solids (dry milk), sugar, and salt… Pretty much, as long as you have the one magic ingredient, the white chocolate is so easy to make it can hardly even be called a recipe.
White Chocolate Chips
(can be sugar-free)
- 2-inch cube cacao butter (30 grams, or 2 tbsp after melting)
- scant 1/8 tsp pure vanilla extract
- stevia or powdered sugar to taste (2 tbsp if powdered sugar)
- 1 tbsp raw cashew or macadamia butter (can omit; it’ll just be less creamy) (15g)
- very tiny pinch salt
- optional: If you can find it, I highly recommend adding 1/2 tsp dry milk powder—such as soy or ricemilk powder—to the ingredients for optimum creamy texture, as this is one of the basic ingredients in every white chocolate bar I looked at during my aforementioned research. However, knowing that a lot of people would have trouble finding the powder, I also tried omitting it. And then I tried adding protein powder instead (increasing to 1 tsp). Omitting or adding the protein powder instead will yield a texture that’s a little different than store-bought white chocolate, but both ways still work! (Just please don’t add liquid milk. I tried that too, and it doesn’t work.)
Melt the cacao butter (either in the microwave or on the stove). Turn off heat, then stir in all other ingredients. Pour into candy molds or a plastic container, and freeze until it hardens. Healthier and vegan white chocolate chips. Yay!
Question of the Day:
Are you going to vote tonight?
I never got around to early voting, so I will be going tonight. Unfortunately, my roommate’s and my opposite votes are going to cancel each other out… we jokingly thought about just staying home!
Link of the Day:
Katie, you are the BEST! I made this white chocolate and used it to replace the white chocolate chips in my childhood favorite Cranberry Christmas Cookies. They were sooooooo good!
Love your blog! Thank you for sharing!! We recently went Gluten free/casein free for our son. So this will be an awesome addition to our baking supplies! One question though…where did you find the “chip” mold for making your own chips? I would love to try this for my kiddos!
Hobby Lobby
Hi Katie, I am excited to try this recipe. Do you know if I make this in bulk, let the candy harden and re-melt, will the chocolate hold up? If so, how should I store it? The plan is to make a big batch and have it handy anytime I want to make chocolate “dipped” things, instead of making each time.. Like a bag of white chocolate chips.
I would store it in the fridge :).
What happens if you condensed soy/coconut/almond milk…. Would that work??
Thank you for adding a powdered sugar measurement! I was so unsure of what amount to start with, I was going to just omit it lol now at least I have an idea 🙂
I was wondering whether you can make this recipe with coconut butter as I am allergic to nuts.
I would think that’d be wonderful! If you try it, let me know how it goes.
Hey Katie! This recipe looks awesome!
Where do you get your cacao butter? I’ve looked all over and I can’t find it. 🙁 Should I buy it online?
Where do you get cocoa butter? I couldn’t find it at Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s.
Hi all,
I was wondering if you could use malt powder instead of milk powder in this recipe?
Plez&&Thank-u 🙂
Sorry, I’ve never tried so I really don’t know.
So is it calcium in milk powder that helps keep the consistency like traditional whitte chocolate? I don’t currently have rice or soy milk powder, but was curious about alternatives (I saw coconut milk powder commented, but didn’t want to be missing an important compositional element..). In the past I made pudding with pre-packaged mix, almond milk and simply crushed calcium to help bond the pudding together. Not sure if this is at all the same thing, but love the idea of this recipe.