I'm making funny cookies for a friend. They're no-bake refrigerator cookies made with (get this) Capt Crunch cereal, peanut butter, nuts and the aforementioned "chocolate". The recipe specifically states the brand of white chocolate chips (yucky fako). Is there any reason NOT to substitute good white chocolate like Ghirardelli? My one concern is that the chocolate is what holds the cookies together and perhaps the fake stuff cools harder after melting. The brand specified in the recipe contains sugar, nonfat milk, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, palm kernel oil, cornstarch, artificial flavor, salt and lecithin. Not so much as a molecule of cocoa butter.
EDIT: As it turns out, I have a half bag of the yucky-fakos. I can't remember or imagine why, but there they are! I feel an experiment coming on. I'm going to divide the recipe into thirds. One-third will only contain the "Creamy Vanilla Premier White Chips (el fako)", one-third will be made entirely with Ghirardelli White Baking Chocolate [bar], the final third will be half and half. I'll make them tonight and report the results!
Best Answer
Here we are, three months after the experiment, I'm finally getting around to writing it up! The fact is, the results are not very exciting.
Straight from the fridge, the three cookies (made with all Ghirardelli white chocolate, all fake white chocolate chips and a half and half mixture) were indistinguishable. At room temperature the all Ghirardelli cookie had a very minor negative. It slightly melted in the hand as you held it to eat, a vaguely unpleasant feeling. The other cookies did not melt in the hand, but tasted the same.
So, for simple no bake applications like this, there is no reason to spend the extra money for "real" white chocolate, the fake stuff is just as good and may even be slightly better.