Is Cocoa Butter Vegan? The Secret to Vegan White Chocolate
Cocoa and butter: two words synonymous with a delicious daily treat. But what is cocoa butter, anyway? And is cocoa butter vegan? It does have the word butter in it, after all.
Today at MiiRO, we let you in on everything cocoa butter related. Plus, you’ll discover our secrets to crafting the most crave-able vegan white chocolate. You just might be hungry after reading this article, and we’ve got just the thing.
Let’s jump into a creamy chocolate pool of cocoa butter facts. There’s so much to learn about this delectable staple ingredient in chocolate!
What Is Cocoa Butter?
Cocoa butter is a fat created from cocoa beans. You may have seen cocoa butter as an ingredient in everything from chocolate to ointments.
When used as a cream or lotion, cocoa butter can help replenish moisture, making it ideal for skin care. As a tasty ingredient, cocoa butter’s fat content gives it a silky smooth texture while it melts in your mouth.
In creating cocoa butter, cacao beans are fermented and then dried in preparation. Once the beans are dried, cacao nibs are what’s left. The nibs are then ground up and pressed, revealing cocoa butter in the form of oil.
The remaining solids are then used to make cocoa powder. Cocoa butter is one of the key ingredients in all types of chocolate, including white chocolate.
Cocoa butter boasts a number of healthful properties. The consumption of cocoa has been shown to reduce inflammation, provide antioxidant properties, and support enhanced cognition. Next time you grab a Peanut Butter Chocolate Bar, it isn’t a stretch to call it brain food!
The fat in cocoa butter makes this a wonderful addition to a ketogenic diet. Keto diets are known for being low in carbohydrates and sugar and high in protein and fat. Add some cocoa butter to your morning cup of Bulletproof coffee and savor the subtle chocolatey notes.
Typically, when we think of the word butter, what comes to mind is a dairy product. This can lead to some confusion when wondering whether or not cocoa butter is vegan!
Rest assured, pure cocoa butter is, in fact, vegan. Plus, because it’s a type of fat, it creates a luxurious texture when used in recipes — no dairy required.
What Makes Something Vegan?
Vegan diets are no longer a fringe lifestyle! Veganism has taken to the mainstream and has garnered big points in the health conversation. Veganism puts a heavy focus on plant-based ingredients with no animal products.
What does it mean to not include animal products in one’s diet? No meat, eggs, dairy, seafood, and (for most vegans) no honey. Being vegan focuses on getting the majority of recommended calories from plant-based sources.
Plant-based ingredients are things like fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds, and legumes — pretty much everything your parents tried to get you to eat when you were little can fall into the plant-based category!
The great thing about plant-based ingredients and chocolate is that chocolate doesn’t need milk to thrive. Though some companies rely on dairy for their milk and white chocolate, we believe in plant-based ingredients and keep them as the star.
When it comes to our vegan white chocolate, we use cocoa butter and keto, vegan-friendly sweeteners with nothing else to bulk it up. Here at MiiRO, our goal is to let our chocolate speak for itself!
Ways To Use Cocoa Butter
While cocoa butter is a great ingredient for white chocolate, it also has many other uses! There are a ton of possibilities that this luscious superstar can conquer.
If you’re looking to elevate your cookie recipe to a magical level, consider cocoa butter. You can substitute cocoa butter for the oil or butter in a recipe for a 1:1 ratio. Understated chocolate notes can really take your dessert recipe up a notch.
Another great use for cocoa butter in baking is fudge. One of the key components of fudge is the delicate texture of solid but meltable chocolate. Cocoa butter gives that rich taste and bite to many fudge recipes.
Looking for something even more fun? What about a cocoa butter lip scrub? It’s a great way to keep your lips from being chapped. Just melt some cocoa butter with sugar and let it cool.
Once your lip scrub has cooled, place it in a glass jar. You can even customize your cocoa butter lip scrub by adding essential oils and flavorings:
- A dash of peppermint oil can give your homemade lip scrub a refreshing twist.
- Calming lavender oil mixed in a cocoa butter lip scrub helps ease anxiety.
DIY cocoa butter lip scrub also makes a wonderful gift. Bet you didn’t expect to have a fun craft night idea with cocoa butter as the culprit!
What Is Chocolate Made With?
White chocolate, milk chocolate, dark chocolate… There are more differences between these chocolate types than just their coloring!
It may come as a surprise to hear that, technically speaking, white chocolate isn’t chocolate at all. This is because chocolate contains cocoa solids by legal definition. You’ll find that cocoa solids, sweeteners, and our friend cocoa butter are the most important components of chocolate.
Dark chocolate is made from cocoa solids and cocoa butter, can be sweetened, and usually has no milk ingredients. Dark chocolate is often suitable for vegans because it generally does not have dairy.
Milk chocolate introduces, you guessed it, milk into the mix. While dairy milk is not considered vegan, that hasn’t stopped us from creating vegan milk chocolate here at MiiRO.
We go the extra mile and replace dairy milk with nut mylk. Because we use nut mylk in our vegan milk chocolate, you can effortlessly enjoy the same creaminess as you would from a traditional milk chocolate bar. These days, vegans aren’t just resigned to eating dark chocolate!
Is White Chocolate Vegan?
Not all white chocolate is created equal. Case in point: A lot of white chocolate produced by other companies contains milk. After all, the ingredients that normally make up white chocolate are cocoa butter, milk, and sweetener.
As we talked about earlier, milk is a no-no when it comes to vegan diets! Here at MiiRO, our white chocolate is vegan and plant-based! This makes our white chocolate one of the few options that is dairy free.
What Are MiiRO’s White Chocolate Ingredients?
Are you asking yourself how white chocolate is made?
Well, our White Chocolate Bar with Crispy Almond Pieces is made from cocoa butter, nutritious oat flour, low-sugar sweeteners, and a hint of salt for that finishing touch.
White chocolate seems to be the final frontier as far as vegan-friendly chocolate is concerned. But speaking of concern, that is something you don’t have to be when it comes to our vegan chocolate!
You can rest easy knowing that our chocolates will always be vegan, low-sugar, and keto-friendly.
Is White Chocolate Really Chocolate?
Technically, that depends on who you ask. The “Is white chocolate chocolate?” debate has been argued for decades, with some people saying this delicious treat isn’t technically chocolate because it doesn’t contain cocoa solids.
Meanwhile, white chocolate lovers claim that white chocolate’s many uses in baking and the presence of cocoa butter means it’s basically as chocolatey as you can get.
Whether you think white chocolate is technically chocolate or not, there’s no question that vegan white chocolate is delicious. And isn’t that what really matters?
Vegan White Chocolate Recipes
So, we’ve answered the question, “Is white chocolate vegan?” with an enthusiastic, “Yes!” Vegan white chocolate is, in fact, a thing. A heavenly delicious thing, of course! It’s now time to consider the limitless opportunities in which our Vegan White Chocolate Bar can shine.
Here are some recipes where you can incorporate vegan white chocolate.
Chocolate Cookies
Harness the healthy fats of almonds by putting them in the spotlight of this recipe. Our Easy Three Ingredient Cookies use one cup of peanut butter, but you can easily replace that with almond butter if you so choose.
Melt down a bar of our Vegan White Chocolate with Almond Pieces, and dip your cooled cookies halfway. Place your cookies on a cookie tray and let them chill in the freezer for 10-15 minutes. After your cookies solidify, you’ll have nutty, wholesome bites of deliciousness.
Oatmeal Cookies
Oatmeal cookies can be polarizing at times. Let’s turn oatmeal cookies into a fan favorite!
Chop up a bar of our white chocolate, and add it to this Vegan Oatmeal Cookie batter. This is such a satisfying way of getting in those whole grains.
Granola
Transform your morning granola fix into an even sweeter breakfast delight by adding white chocolate to a batch of our Cashew Granola. Once your granola is out of the oven and cooled, mix in pieces of our vegan white chocolate.
Munching on a tasty combination of oats, chopped cashews, and banana with little flecks of vegan white chocolate in every bite. Oh-so yummy!
Conclusion
Yes, cocoa butter is vegan! While cocoa butter is an inherently vegan product, not all white chocolate is vegan. Cocoa butter is our secret weapon for veganizing deliciously angelic white chocolate.
Following a vegan diet doesn’t have to mean you can’t include vegan white chocolate when reaching for something sweet. With cocoa butter running the show, you can say goodbye to unsatisfying, waxy, too-sweet white chocolate.
Our Vegan White Chocolate Bar with Almond Pieces is flawlessly smooth and sumptuous — thanks, cocoa butter!
Sources:
Impact of Cocoa Consumption on Inflammation | PMC
Health Benefits of Cocoa | PMC
Effects of Lavender on Anxiety | PMC
