Don't like white chocolate? Try it roasted.

I don't really like white chocolate. It's too sweet, and lacks any real flavour aside from vanilla. That changed when I met Johnny Oran.

He's the co-owner of Licia Ruby, a new Windsor-Essex food company he runs with his wife, Elise Keller. In addition to small-scale catering and pop-up dinners, their signature food product is a white chocolate bar. A roasted white chocolate bar.

Regular chocolate contains both cocoa butter and cocoa solids — the solids are what makes it brown. White chocolate contains just the cocoa butter, which isn't brown. So when you roast white chocolate at the right temperature, the butter melts and the sugar caramelizes. 

Roasting white chocolate is a technique I've seen in desserts at high-end restaurants. Because of its brittle nature, however, it's usually found in bark, shard or crumbled form.

As far as I can tell, selling roasted white chocolate in bar form is much more rare — and it's a lot more complicated than simply putting a bar of white chocolate in the oven. 

From start to finish, it takes Johnny and his co-chef, Chris Chittle, about three days to make the bars.The final product looks nothing like white chocolate — it's actually light brown.

As for the taste, Licia Ruby's bars are light and a little grainy in texture, melting in your mouth like an Aero Bar. When I took a bar around the newsroom and asked people to describe the flavour, "caramel" and "toffee" were some of the words people used — and they're totally right. The process of roasting white chocolate adds a totally new dimension to the confection.

I met up with Johnny this week to learn about their signature offering. Click on the audio player to hear what I found.

Windsor Morning7:50Food with Jonathan Pinto - Roasted White Chocolate

White chocolate? Jonathan Pinto isn't a fan. Roasted white chocolate? He loves it. This morning, he told us about the roasted white chocolate bars produced by the Licia Ruby Food Company.

Want to try roasted white chocolate?

Licia Ruby debuted at the Walkerville Night Market earlier this summer. They'll be at the market again this Friday.

You can also find their chocolate at The Little White Kitchen in Windsor at 543 Lincoln Rd. and at Dressed By An Olive's Tecumseh location at 366 Manning Rd.