White Chocolate with Vanilla

White chocolate is one of my favorites especially if made with berries. Having tasted the excellent Icoa from El Rey this bar from Marks and Spencer is going to find it tough to make an impression.

Packaging: Relatively ordinary plain 'cream' paper wrapper with a flash of silver across the front. There is no indication as to where the cocoa butter comes from except that the bar is made in Switzerland. There is a full list of ingredients and helpful nutritional information. 


The bar is described thus, "We use just cocoa butter, milk, cane sugar (which has a rich, slightly caramelised flavour) and real vanilla pods to create this luxurious creamy white chocolate".


The Chocolate: White chocolate is not really 'chocolate' in the true sense as it only contains cocoa butter from the cocoa bean. Many purists would turn their noses up at the stuff and refer to it as confectionery and not chocolate! The taste comes mainly from the addition of vanilla which is extracted from vanilla pods. Cocoa butter is a fat that looks and feels like white soap. Sounds delicious doesn't it! In fact the cocoa butter is added to give chocolate a smooth texture and is an expensive ingredient. 

The Taste: Vanilla is the first smell that hits you when you open the foil and the vanilla seeds are evident within the bar. The taste is very disappointing, the overriding flavour coming through is skimmed milk. The mouth feel is waxy and almost like eating a very mild bar of soap.


Ingredients: Cane sugar, Cocoa Butter, Dried Whole Milk, Dried Skimmed Milk, Ground Vanilla Pods. White chocolate contains milk solids 26% minimum. Priced at £1.39 for 100g.


This is not a particularly good white chocolate as far as I'm concerned and this is where spending that little bit more money for a quality bar will pay dividends. Alternatively, if you're desperate for white chocolate stick with those well known brands if you know what I mean!


I can't even bring myself to score this bar which is disappointing. I'll probably use it for baking.


If you're shopping for good white chocolate then visit http://www.chocolatetradingco.com they have a great range and I hope to be tasting some soon.