This Simple Trick Will Take Your White Chocolate To The Next Level
Many chocolate lovers have strong feelings about preferring either the bitter, slightly floral dark chocolate or its creamy, sweet milk chocolate counterpart. White chocolate often gets overlooked as something that, well, doesn't really taste all that much like chocolate. It's often those cloying sweet notes that emerge from a piece of white chocolate rather than any complexity in flavor. However, if you're firmly in the white chocolate haters camp, this easy and simple trick just might change your mind.
In order to get more complexity out of white chocolate and to coax out some of those more subtle flavor, all you need to do is caramelize it (via The Pioneer Woman). Then, rather than just tasting a slab of sugar, you will get notes of butterscotch and other deeper, more complex flavors. You also don't need fancy equipment to caramelize white chocolate. According to Ree Drummond herself, you simply need a cookie sheet and an oven set to 250 degrees F. The entire process takes less than an hour, although you will want to peek in and stir the chocolate pieces turned mixture about every 10 minutes in order to ensure it caramelizes evenly. You will be able to actually see the process occurring, as the chocolate goes from a creamy white color to a caramel hue. This visual cue can be helpful in knowing when you have reached that point of caramelization when the chocolate is ready to use.
Here's how to ensure your white chocolate gets perfectly caramelized
One of the most important things to guarantee your Willy Wonka-approved experiment goes off without a hitch is to ensure you are actually using white chocolate. It seems simple, but the sweet treat is sometimes sold in the form of morsels or wafers that are more sugar than actual chocolate — you need a minimum of 30% cocoa solids for the caramelization process to work properly (via Sugar Salt Magic). If you go with chocolate that has less than that amount of cocoa solids, it can get a bit chalky and dry during the caramelization process and might require a bit of extra attention and the addition of ingredients like cream to get a better consistency (via David Lebovitz).
Most recipes out there seem to agree with Ree Drummond's method of simply baking the chocolate in intervals on a sheet pan, making the process quite straightforward. Once you have that creamy, complex concoction, the options are endless when it comes to how to use it (via The Pioneer Woman). Incorporate some other ingredients for a caramelized white chocolate ganache or buttercream, or simply wait until the entire mass solidifies and mix it into a baked good like cookies or brownies. However, we certainly will not judge you if you opt to simply eat the end result straight from the sheet pan — it's hard to resist that caramelized, fragrant treat!