Caramelised White Chocolate

I have a new favourite flavour. My previous favourite flavour was caramel. So it's no surprise that my new favourite flavour is caramelised white chocolate. It's something I've seen on Masterchef a couple of times, without really knowing what it was. So imagine my surprise when I looked up the recipe and it was just literally white chocolate which has been caramelised.

It is by no means a difficult process. It consists of only three components.

The pan
The first time I did it, I used a baking tray, but I've found it's better to use an oven-safe fry-pan as my baking tray had grooves which the chocolate got stuck in.

The oven
Turn your oven to the lowest temperature it can go. David Lebovitz's recipe asked 120C but mine doesn't go below 150C, so the exact temperature isn't important. However it is important know what temperature you're using because the higher the temperature, the shorter the cooking time at each stage.

The chocolate
This is, as expected, the most important part. The first time, I used Lindt 36% cocoa solids white chocolate. You need a high cocoa content (relative to white chocolate) for this to work. The second time I used a 29% Cadbury white chocolate, which worked absolutely fine. From the comments I've read, you don't want to be using anything below this percent as it doesn't work, exactly what goes wrong I'm not sure.

Cadbury "Real White Chocolate".

Finally the cooking. Put the chocolate into the pan, making sure it's in little pieces to aid the melting. I used an 150C oven so if your oven can go a bit lower, you can add a couple of minutes to each cooking period and it's fine. Like I said, it's a very easy process. Once the chocolate is in the oven, set the timer for 6 or 7 minutes. Once the time goes off, give the chocolate a stir, and then put it back in for another 6 or 7 minutes. And repeat. You'll find after the first period, the chocolate will have melted to a nice, smooth, sexy liquid. However after that, if you have your timing right, when you give it a mix it'll be more solid, almost like it has seized. That's ok though, it's what's meant to happen. In fact, you want it to seize. If it doesn't, it means it hasn't been heated long enough. By my reasoning, what happens is the chocolate melts, then seizes. It is when it seizes does the caramelisation process occur. However it can over caramelise very quickly which is why you need to continually pull it out and stir it, to prevent over-caramelising (read burning).

Stages of caramelisation

I could say how long it takes, but I didn't time it. Generally it's about an hour. But it's much easier to go by eye. The colour you're looking for is like peanut butter. That's the bare minimum. You can go further, to develop the caramel flavour more, however some of us find it tedious to set a timer for seven minutes and go to the oven to stir a pan around more than five or six times.

Once you've reached your stopping point, let it cool for a couple of minutes and it'll return to the smooth, runny melted chocolate texture which makes it easy to transfer to an air-tight jar. When it cools, it will set rock hard as it is still just chocolate. It will also look like it has split, with light streaks through it, however these go away upon re-heating.

Now what to do with it? Before you do anything, I suggest you taste it. If you're anything like me, two things will hit your mind. First: love. The taste is amazing. Usually I'm not a fan of white chocolate because I find all I taste is sweet, however this is completely different. I know it sounds stupid and completely obvious, but it tastes like caramel and white chocolate. The second thing you'll notice is how sweet it is. This means that anything you add it to, you will need to taste to make sure you don't overload with sugar. Typically recipes take this into account, however if you like adding things together willy-nilly (like me), you need to be careful.

So far I've used this to make a hot chocolate, which was divine. A 250g batch of white chocolate was enough for about a litre and a half of milk, more or less depending on your sweet tooth. I also just made an ice cream, again using a 250g batch for one litre of custard. To mix the chocolate in, all you need to do is reheat it till it runs and then mix it with the milk or cream. At the heart of it, it's still just chocolate. Just very, very delicious chocolate.