White chocolate with whole hazelnuts

White chocolate with whole hazelnuts from Piedmont

White chocolate with whole hazelnuts from Tastelanghe in Piedmont. A 110-gram bar containing 30% whole, roasted hazelnuts in creamy white chocolate made with cocoa butter, milk fat, and Bourbon vanilla.

White chocolate with whole hazelnuts is the lightest of the four Tastelanghe bars. Thirty percent whole, roasted Piedmont hazelnuts are embedded in a white chocolate made of sugar, cocoa butter, skimmed milk powder, and milk fat, rounded off with real Bourbon vanilla.

Creamy-sweet, with the nut to counter it

White chocolate has a well-known problem: without cocoa mass, it lacks a bitter counterpoint and quickly tilts toward being too sugary. That is precisely what the whole, roasted nuts are for. They provide the bar with toasted aroma, crunch, and a slight bitterness that tempers the sweetness.

The vanilla comes from real Bourbon pods, not from a bottle of vanillin. You can taste this difference particularly clearly with white chocolate, because it has so little to hide.

Visually, it is the most beautiful of the four: ivory-colored, with the dark nuts providing contrast. On a dessert plate, it is more impressive than any dark bar.

Whole nuts from our own harvest

Thirty percent whole hazelnuts, roasted and placed individually into the warm chocolate. The nuts come from the Quazzo family groves in Somano in the Alta Langa, 40 hectares south of Alba.

Hazelnuts have been grown there since 1891, now in the fifth generation. Tastelanghe sources the white couverture, but the pouring and topping takes place in their own factory in Somano.

Because white chocolate is processed at a lower temperature than dark chocolate, the timing here is trickier: the nuts must be set before the mass firms up, and the mass does not tolerate heat.

Why white chocolate is not (technically) chocolate

Strictly speaking, white chocolate is not chocolate, as it contains no cocoa mass – only cocoa butter, the light-colored fat component of the bean. Everything that makes chocolate dark and bitter is missing.

That is why it stands or falls on the quality of its few ingredients. Good cocoa butter, real milk fat, real vanilla – that is what makes a white bar that tastes like something instead of just sugar.

As a gift, it has a practical advantage: it looks different from everything else on the shelf next to it. A light-colored bar with dark nuts and a hilly texture stands out before anyone has even read the name.

Who it is made for

White chocolate has its fans and its detractors, and there is rarely anything in between. This bar is an attempt to win over the latter group, and it has good arguments.

The most important are the 30% whole nuts. They give the bar structure and toasted aroma and take away exactly what critics dislike about white chocolate: that nothing happens except sweetness.

It becomes a sauce in warm apple crumble

It is ready for a cappuccino in the afternoon, or for a glass of Moscato d'Asti – the floral sparkling wine and the sweet bar are a natural match.

Roughly chopped over fresh strawberries, it is hard to beat in the summer, and in a warm apple crumble, it melts into a sauce that you wouldn't have thought of before. It also works well over a berry salad, where its sweetness catches the acidity of the fruit.

In our shop, you can find other specialties from Tastelanghe made with the same hazelnuts – the hazelnuts in white chocolate for snacking, the Tartufo Dolce Bianco as a truffle, or other chocolates from our range.

Storage

Store in a cool, dry, and dark place. White chocolate is the most sensitive of all – light and heat cause it to age faster, and its milk fat absorbs foreign odors particularly readily. Do not store next to coffee.