In honor of National White Chocolate Day we are dedicating this week's Texture Tuesday blog to Lemon Bar None...
White chocolate is often misunderstood, and often misrepresented! The cacao butter that gives chocolate that perfectly melt-in-your mouth smooth characteristic is also the most expensive component of the cacao bean. This is because the melting point of cocoa butter is so close to human body temperature and because of that it's also extraordinarily valuable to make other body related things like cosmetics, which command a higher market price. So, very often, when chocolate companies are looking to save money, they replace that fat with a cheaper alternative fat which is why bad white chocolate will come off as "waxy". The fat is simply not melting the same as the smooth, smooth cocoa butter does in your mouth.
Our white chocolate of course uses the good stuff, but it uses some other "good stuff" that makes it extra delicious like grass fed milk from Cayambe in the Andes Mountains and sugar cane from all over Ecuador!
When we are tasting white chocolate, we are looking for a white chocolate that, if it was put on a spectrum from mayonnaise to vanilla ice cream, it would land right in the middle, somewhere around "butter". This is important because of the variety of applications for which we use white chocolate! At Bon Bon Bon, white chocolate could be blended with anything from bleu cheese to mangoes and tahini or smoked and grated over the top of a fig custard. Around here, you never know what we might dream up. And for that reason, we want a well rounded, bold white chocolate so that it can be detected against some of the stronger flavors that we use.
Now about our Lemon Bar None bon...
Some Bons pay homage to people we know - maybe it's a technique that a friend came in and taught us-like when Monique from Alchemy Henna (link: https://www.
Lemon Bar None is a gem that honors the keeper of the perfect Lemon Bar recipe! You know the ultimate baking mom who enjoys sipping a glass of wonderful wine while dazzling in the kitchen.
Some recipes are good just because they are good but other recipes are extra good because of the people who make them for you. This is one of those!