Hi Mike,
I guess I object most to its name. The rest is subject to taste. Let me quote my favorite authority on the subject, Sandra Boynton, as written, illustrated, and overresearched in her famous work Chocolate, The Consuming Passion:
White Chocolate
There is some disagreement over whether white chocolate is "real" chocolate. Its ingredients - cocoa butter, sugar, milk solids, and vanilla - are largely the same as those of milk chocolate, but without the chocolate liqour. Anyone who would claim that the absence of liquor would disqualify white chocolate as chocolate is quibbling; the same purist would probably argue that fructose and water is not "real" orange juice.
((picture))
((caption)) White chocolate has great appeal for those who find that color and flavor interfere with the experience of texture.
Buying white chocolate is somewhat risky. Most chocolate has to conform to ingredient guidelines set by the Food and Drug Administration; white chocolate does not. And since it is most often sold not in prepackaged bars but in chunks (called "break-up"), there is frequently no ingredient label on it. You could, therefore, unwittingly purchase as "white chocolate" a candy made of sugar, milk, vanilla, and congealed vegetable fat.
However, the very best white chocolate is easy to identify. It has an ivory color like this:
It smells like this:
(sratch and smell Smilie on the screen)
And it tastes like this:
(lick Smilie on screen)
Zeide
