The mystery of white chocolate milk in cooking

[cteavin]

Borrowing a page from Modernist Cuisine, I put 500ml of whole milk and 70 grams cocoa nibs in an ISI container with two charges of NO2. Eight to twelve hours later I strained. The milk is white with a grains of cocoa (which fall out on their own), but tastes strongly of chocolate -- it's white chocolate milk.

As a drink, with sweetener it's delicious. But baking with it the flavour evaporates. Why, and does anyone have a suggestion on how to keep the chocolate flavour?

To be more specific, I used the white chocolate milk in place of milk in drop cookies and white cake batter. In the batter the flavour is noticeable, after baking, it's gone. Baking times were between 10 and 40 minutes. The only thing I can think to do is try the experiment again with heavy cream and see if the fat preserves the flavour. Any thoughts on this?

[jmacnaughtan]

With things like that cake batter and cookies, you're never going to get a lot of flavor from the milk- you just don't use enough, and during baking, almost all flavors get knocked down a notch or two.

Try it in a crème anglaise, maybe, then experiment with mousses, pastry creams crème brûlées. That's the place to go if you want to keep the flavour.

[cteavin]

Thank you. I'll give it a try.

[cteavin]

As a follow up, I made two custards with the "White Chocolate Milk". Both were very good. My kids were surprised because they expected vanilla and got chocolate. I like foods that present a surprise like that.