white chocolate
While it's easy to consume a whole bar of bittersweet chocolate at one sitting, if you try to do this with white chocolate, you'll probably end up feeling ill.
What is it? Although you'd never guess from its name, white chocolate isn't really chocolate because it doesn't contain chocolate liquor. It's actually one of the byproducts of grinding cocoa beans. If the ground beans are mixed with sugar and/or other ingredients, it becomes bitter, bittersweet or milk chocolate. The chocolate liquor can be separated into cocoa solids (cocoa powder) and cocoa butter. White chocolate is made of fat (the cocoa butter) mixed with sugar, milk solids and other flavourings, giving it a distinctive off-white colour, rather than the brown we associate with 'real' chocolate.
What are the differences? Some so-called white chocolates use cheaper vegetable shortening in place of the cocoa butter. Vegetable shortening doesn't melt as smoothly on the tongue so doesn't give the same luscious, rich taste. You can't tell just by looking at it if it's real white chocolate or an imposter, but the fake stuff should have words such as 'compound coating', 'coating chocolate' or 'confectioner's coating' on the label. The advantage of coating chocolate is that it doesn't have to be tempered if it's used to coat truffles or other confectionary.
Where does it come from? Cocoa beans are grown in Central America. The best chocolate, including white chocolate, is manufactured in countries such as Switzerland, Belgium and France, but other countries (including Britain and the United States) are catching up.
What else? Although it might contain the same percentage of sugar as dark or milk chocolate, white chocolate tastes sweeter because it doesn't contain any bitter flavours (such as cocoa liquor). For this reason, it goes well with coffee, which has bitter notes, and tangy, not-too-sweet fruits such as raspberries.
Because white chocolate contains a high percentage of sugar and milk solids, it burns easily, so take care when melting it.