Dark vs White Chocolate Brownies

Introduction: 

Have you ever wondered what the difference between dark and white chocolate is? Anyone could quickly look it up, and you would see that white chocolate isn't actually chocolate. Instead of focusing on the chemical difference, let us focus on the texture and taste differences. 

Process:

To make the brownies, I used a white chocolate brownie recipe. I made the first batch of brownies with white chocolate, and the second batch using the same recipe, but replacing the chocolate with dark chocolate. 

The batter looked very similar (except for the obvious color difference), but the texture of the dark chocolate batter looked a little grainier than the white chocolate. Also, I noticed that the white chocolate batter was slightly thicker. 

I cooked both brownies for exactly 40 minutes and allowed them to cool before tasting. 

Results:

I brought both batches of brownies to my gymnastics friends once again, and they rated them 1-10 in 4 different categories. The results are below:

Chemistry:

The chocolate I used was: “Ghirardelli Premium Baking Classic White Chips” and “Ghirardelli Premium Baking 60% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate Chips”.

White Chocolate Chips Nutrition

Dark Chocolate Chips Nutrition

As you can see, the dark chocolate has 6g of total fat, compared to 4g of total fat in the white chocolate. Despite this, they both have 3.5g of saturated fat.  The white chocolate also has more cholesterol and sodium than dark chocolate. Finally, dark chocolate has 3 less grams of sugar than the white chocolate. 

Chemically, white chocolate is  “Sugar, Palm Kernel Oil, Whole Milk Powder, Nonfat Dry Milk, Palm Oil, Soy Lecithin, Vanilla Extract”. This shows that white chocolate has no actual chocolate in it. This is why the texture, and sweetness is different in white chocolate.