What Is Blonde Chocolate?

A delicious choice, and different from your standard milk chocolate, blonde chocolate is white chocolate that has been cooked slowly until it turns gold. It goes from sweet and milk to something close to toffee and dulce de leche.

If you’ve visited one of our shops, you may have spotted a golden bar sitting by the milk and white chocolate and wondered what it was. The easiest way to understand is for you to taste it, but this guide is the next best thing.

How Is Blonde Chocolate Made?

Blonde chocolate starts life as white chocolate. It’s heated at a low temperature for several hours and stirred regularly so it cooks evenly without catching. As it cooks, the sugar caramelises and the milk proteins react with the sugars in what’s called the Maillard reaction.

Getting it right takes time and very careful temperature control. Too much heat and it burns or turns grainy. We source and use high quality blonde chocolate, tempering it and crafting it into beautiful delicious treats.

What Ingredients Are In Blonde Chocolate?

Blonde chocolate uses the same ingredients as white chocolate, which is mainly made up of cocoa butter, sugar and milk powder. The taste is very different from milk or dark chocolate as it doesn’t include cocoa solids. 

The 30% on our blonde chocolate buttons refers to the cocoa content, which in blonde chocolate comes entirely from cocoa butter. That’s what gives it such a smooth, creamy melt.

Blonde Chocolate vs White Chocolate

Many people who enjoy white chocolate also enjoy blonde chocolate. White chocolate tastes mainly of cream, sugar and vanilla, whereas blonde chocolate has stronger flavours of caramel and biscuit. 

The sugar content barely changes, but the blonde tastes noticeably less sweet in comparison because the caramel notes balance it out.

What Does Blonde Chocolate Taste Like?

Most people can identify the caramel flavours first, followed by the butter and biscuit. When people compare the taste to other sweet treats, they often note it shares flavours with shortbread and digestives. 

Dulce de leche is a good reference if you’ve tried it. So is the top of a creme brulee, where the sugar has been torched. It’s still a sweet chocolate, but it has far more depth than white.

That buttery flavour is also why it works so well with a hot drink. We recommend sitting back and relaxing with a cup of tea and our crunchy blonde chocolate bar.

Baking With Blonde Chocolate

You can opt for blonde chocolate in most recipes that use white chocolate without changing anything else. It works really well chopped into cookies and blondies, as well as stirred into cake batter.

Don’t use it as a straight swap for dark chocolate, though. Dark chocolate contains cocoa solids that help brownies and mousses set. Blonde chocolate doesn’t so the result will be much softer and sweeter.

When melting blonde chocolate, keep the heat low as it catches faster than dark chocolate. 

Buttons are the easiest choice to bake with because they melt evenly and there’s no chopping involved, so our blonde chocolate buttons work just as well in a cookie dough as they do straight from the bag.

Blonde Chocolate Pairings

Banana is a classic choice to pair with blonde chocolate.  The caramel flavours in the blonde chocolate does a similar job to the toffee in a banoffee pie, which is exactly the idea behind our banoffee pie dessert bars.

Salt and crunch are the other obvious partners. Sea salt, pretzels, pecans and popcorn all stop the sweetness from taking over. Our blonde chocolate popcorn clusters are light and moreish, while our crunchy blonde chocolate bar adds a crisp wafer bite to every square.

Honeycomb is a natural fit too, as its burnt sugar taste lines up closely with the caramel in the chocolate. If you’ve not tried blonde chocolate before, our blonde chocolate honeycomb is a good place to start.

For home baking, blonde chocolate also pairs well with coffee, apple and pears. In autumn, we enjoy pairing it with cinnamon or ginger.

Is Blonde Chocolate Similar To Ruby Chocolate?

Blonde and ruby chocolate both get called the fourth chocolate, but they’re made in completely different ways. Blonde chocolate starts as white chocolate and gets its flavour from slow caramelisation. Ruby chocolate comes from specially processed cocoa beans that keep a natural pink colour.

The taste is just as different, blonde chocolate has a toffee-like taste whilst ruby chocolate tastes fruity and sometimes a little sour. Ruby chocolate also contains cocoa solids, whereas blonde chocolate doesn’t.

Where To Buy Blonde Chocolate

Blonde chocolate is easier to find now than it was a few years ago, but quality often varies. It’s important to check the ingredients list as cocoa butter should be near the top. Cheap blonde chocolate often replaces cocoa butter with vegetable fat, which gives it a waxy texture and a flatter flavour.

We’ve been handrafting luxury chocolate treats in the North West since 2014 and our range of blonde chocolate treats is made fresh in small batches in our Chester production kitchen.

You can explore our blonde chocolate collection online, with free standard delivery on orders over £50, or visit us at Chester Market, Altrincham Market House or the Picturedrome in Macclesfield.