Why does chocolate turn white

Imagine opening a box of delectable chocolates that your friend had gifted you some days back, only to see them turning white! The reason for them to turn grayish to white boils down to the storage or the lack of it. There are two types of phenomena that attribute to the whitish color permeating through the surface of these chocolates: sugar bloom and fat bloom.

Sugar bloom is the result of moisture gathering on the outside of the chocolate. The sugar content in the brownie begins to soften due to wetness. When the moisture begins to evaporate, sugar crystals stick to the surface. If the process repeats, the surface can turn muggy and lose color. One can also relate sugar bloom to the ‘sweating of chocolate’ where it is stored in a relative cool surrounding and then moved into a much warmer temperature zone. When this happens, there is surface moisture on the chocolate, making it turn white.

Fat bloom is just like sugar bloom, but the only difference is that in this case, it is cocoa butter or fat that drifts away from the delicious chocolate and sit itself on the outside area of the body. Just like sugar bloom, the common reasons for fat bloom are rapid changes in the temperature and excessively warm storage medium.

Though you may not find the discolored ‘white’ chocolate as delectable as rich cocoa filled brown chocolate, it is still edible and fine for you to eat. The sugar bloom chocolate has a grainy texture on the outside but there should not be any major change in the taste. If you want to prevent your chocolate from turning white, make sure that you incorporate correct storage methods.

Make sure that chocolate is wrapped tight and stored away from any other type of food that emits pungent odors. This is because chocolate has the tendency to easily take in flavors from other food products stored nearby. The best temperature to store chocolate is between 64 and 69 degrees Fahrenheit. If you store it well, you can expect milk and traditionally white chocolates to stay fresh up to six months and other varieties to have an extended shelf life.