Notes on chocolate: pale and interesting

It is a rare, desperate day that I can eat white chocolate; although melted into warm cream, chilled, then whipped, Green & Black’s White Cooking Chocolate (150g, £2.50) makes a stunning eclair filling. Or you can use it to make your own squirty cream, by piling it into an icing bag with a tube star attachment and squirting it straight into your children’s mouths. You’ve never seen a quicker line-up than when offering this.

Luckily, white chocolate has undergone a major rehabilitation in recent years. Rococo’s Lemon and Poppyseed (70g, £5.95) has an exquisite lemon zing and poppyseed crunch, if they could just ramp down the sugar. Its 32% Blonde (70g, £5.95) version – where sugar isn’t the first ingredient – is better. Hotel Chocolat’s Mint White (100g, £3.95) has the excitement of mint crystals and peppermint oil, which stops it being too cloying. My favourite, however, was Artisan du Chocolat’s Creamy Mascarpone (45g, £3.95), which is white chocolate with actual mascarpone cheese in it. This lends it a super-creamy taste that I went back for.

But then something happened that blew my mind. Pump Street’s 40% Brown Bread (70g, £6.25). I was happily munching through it thinking it was regular milk, until I realised it is actually white chocolate in dark clothing: thanks to a touch of cocoa powder and brown bread crumbs. Now I don’t know what to think.

If all else fails, the baker Dan Lepard recommends adding melted white chocolate into tea cake-bakes to give a softer crumb. It works, too.