Here are some bones -- nice for Halloween. To make these, you impale marshmallows on straight pretzel sticks and dip the resulting barbell shapes into white chocolate, keeping them imprecise enough to look sort of like bones. Let them dry on waxed paper.
Combine these with other spooky goodies for your Halloween parties. They're fun, they have the trendy salty/sweet combo of flavors people relish, and both kids and adults like them.
There is, however, confusion about white chocolate. White chocolate is made from cocoa butter, sugar, vanilla, and milk solids. There is no cocoa or chocolate solids in it, so many people would say that it isn't chocolate at all.
In fact, cocoa butter without cocoa may be best suited to external use -- it's great in lotions and shampoos and, since it's edible, it's also good for lip balms. It's used pharmaceutically as well, and is a better choice for medical and cosmetic uses than petroleum jelly. It's one of the most stable fats around, so it doesn't turn rancid in heat or with age.
Cocoa butter contains no cholesterol, but it has lots of saturated fat (though there's evidence that the type of fat in cocoa butter is not as unhealthy as the type in animal fats) and the only nutrient it offers is vitamin K. Still, since the white chocolate you eat contains only 30% cocoa butter (good quality white chocolate) or less (most grocery store varieties), the amount of cocoa butter in your average white chocolate confection is small. White chocolate is about half sugar, with the remaining 20-30% of the ingredients being milk, vanilla, and lecithin. There may be other oils (coconut or palm oil) as well. Basically, we're talking candy here, not chocolate.
Still, many people love it. The bones shown above are fun and have an interesting variety of flavors. Here's a recipe for White Chocolate Truffles, and one for Caramelized White Chocolate, if you want to give the stuff a fair shake in serious confectionery.
