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:
Poor Katie. Too much grief for a post about white chocolate!!! But you did an excellent job of editing on the fly, because your current post is fabulous. And I am way more of a bitter, dark chocolate fan, but am thrilled to have some decent white chocolate to throw into an oatmeal, cranberry cookie! Woo-hoo! If you want to get started on that recipe for me, that’d be great. Feel free to bake them, leave them as dough, turn it into breakfast oatmeal, add macadamia nuts. I’m just thinking that would be a great combo for the holidays…hint, hint. 😉
Love your site. You continue to completely fulfill my cravings for sweets, while still maintaining my wish to offer nutritious foods to my family. I just love being able to dump a cup of chocolate chips into something and still tell myself it’s health food. Yay!
I will put it on my to-do list! If not this year, maybe in the cookbook or next year!
I actually am a HUGE white “chocolate” fan! I prefer it to real chocolate (GASP!) Thanks for the recipe!!
Hi! I tried to email you, but I don’t think that button is working (or it doesn’t do what I thought it did!). I would really love to see a toffee recipe–my mother’s toffee is all sugar and cream, but it’s my absolute favorite!
It’s on my list of things to try :).
I second this!
If for any reason you’re unable to eat sugar you can make toffee with xylitol. It reacts exactly the same way as sugar when heated (i.e. turns into caramel). Tastes the same too. And while I’ve never tried it myself you could probably add soy, almond, coconut or oat cream substitutes instead of normal cream if you are vegan or intolerant/allergic to dairy products (coconut cream is probably the best option for making toffee as cream substitutes like soy tend to be quite low in fat, whereas coconut cream has a fat content similar to normal dairy cream).
Be careful with Xylitol however, as large quantities makes you have the runs. :\ Had to find that out the hard way.
Third!
Awesome! So does this taste like white chocolate or does it have a different flavor? I really despise the white chocolate taste so I’m wondering if this exactly mimics that or not.
Absentee ballot all the way! The only thing that makes me sad is that I don’t have time to walk in my ballot so that I can get a sticker. Sad panda (bear).
I think it pretty much tastes like the white chocolate I remember.
Yay for voting! I vote by mail, and the only downside is I don’t get the “I voted” sticker to wear on election day.
I actually did vote in person, and they didn’t have any stickers! Major bummer. I mean, obviously, still yay for participating in the democratic process of course, but grown-ups so rarely get stickers for accomplishing things 🙂
Same here! I told them I was going to complain to the president of the United States… just as soon as I found out who he was ;).
How much does this recipe yield? I have a no-bake cookie recipe that is made with white chocolate, and am thinking of using this version instead of the store bought!
It really depends on how big your candy molds are, or if you make bars. I didn’t actually count the amount I got… but if you make small chips you can get a lot out of it. I will have to go back and measure a cup amount soon!
Were you ever able to go back and see how much this makes? I want to use it to make peppermint bark but I am not sure if I should double or triple this recipe . Thanks!
I need to know the same thing! If anyone knows how much this makes, either in cups, ounces or grams, I’d be very grateful if they’d reply.
What a great invention! This would be great in some white chocolate macadamia nut cookies this Christmas! I didn’t get around to early voting either, so I’ll be out there tonight.
Dear Katie,
I’m voting for you for President 🙂
Thank you thank you thank you a million billion trillion times over! I miss white chocolate and loved cookies with the white chips in them, thanks for posting this 🙂
And I CANNOT wait for your cookbook to come out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
Haha I don’t want the job! Too much stress! 😉 Although I don’t always agree with the president (not just this one, but past presidents as well), I admire the fact that he must work insanely hard to run our country (and often find his work met with criticism).
Thank you so much, Karen :).
Love these! I feel like a whole new world has opened up–white chocolate has always felt mysterious.
And not to be a plant nerd, but tomatoes are a vegetable. Vegetable is a culinary term, so any part of an edible plant can be a vegetable (roots, leaves, fruits, buds, tubers, etc). Botanically, tomatoes are a fruit, as are cucumbers, zucchini, pumpkins etc, as in they are formed from a developed flower. Wow, I am a nerd! 🙂
I love learning new things in the comment section… Science was never my strong suit, so any time I can learn, I am open to it. The world needs more nerds!
In Asian groceries you can find coconut milk powder. I’ve never seen powdered soy or rice milk but powdered coconut milk is really easy to find