White Chocolate Day

What the day is

White Chocolate Day is observed on September 22. It celebrates the one member of the chocolate family that regularly gets told it does not belong: a confection of cocoa butter, sugar and milk solids, with none of the cocoa solids that make dark and milk chocolate brown and bitter.

That absence is the whole argument. Cocoa butter is the fat pressed from the cacao bean, so white chocolate does come from the same plant, but without cocoa solids it has no chocolate flavor in the usual sense. What it has instead is dairy, vanilla and sweetness, which is why people tend to either love it or dismiss it outright.

Origin and background

The origin of the observance is not documented, and no founder or sponsoring organization is reliably known.

White chocolate itself dates to the 1930s, when Nestlé began selling a white bar in Europe, reportedly as a way to use surplus milk powder. It reached the United States decades later and spent a long time in regulatory limbo, since it did not meet the legal definition of chocolate. The US Food and Drug Administration established a standard of identity for it in the early 2000s, requiring at least 20 percent cocoa butter and 14 percent milk solids, with sugar capped at 55 percent. Products below that line are properly called white confection or candy coating, and a look at the ingredient list will usually reveal vegetable fat standing in for cocoa butter.

How to take part

Buy a bar with a short ingredient list and cocoa butter named first among the fats, and the difference from supermarket coating is immediate.

• Melt it gently. White chocolate scorches and seizes at a lower temperature than dark, so use low heat and stir constantly.
• Pair it with acid. Raspberry, passion fruit, lemon or sour cherry cut the sweetness that puts people off.
• Try it against salt. A little flaky salt on a white chocolate blondie changes it considerably.
• Keep it cool and sealed. It picks up other smells easily and goes stale faster than dark chocolate.

If you have only met it as a seasonal drink topping, a good bar eaten plain is a fair second introduction.