Ingredients
- 200g chocolate, chopped small or in callets
- Double cream, milk or boiling water, only if you need to rescue a seized batch
Equipment. Dry microwave safe bowl, glass or ceramic, Silicone spatula, Digital thermometer, Saucepan and a heatproof bowl, for the bain-marie route, Serrated knife or a chocolate chipper
Method
- Chop the chocolate to roughly the size of a pea. Uneven pieces melt at different rates, so the small ones scorch while the big ones sit there solid.
- Check that the bowl and the spatula are bone dry. Wipe them if you are not sure.
- Microwave at 50 per cent power for 20 to 30 seconds.
- Take the bowl out and stir hard for ten seconds, scraping the sides and the base. Most of the melting happens while you stir.
- Repeat in 20 to 30 second bursts, stirring fully each time. Shorten the bursts to 10 seconds once the mixture is mostly liquid.
- Stop when about a fifth of the chocolate is still lumpy. Keep stirring off the heat until it is smooth.
- Check the temperature if you have a thermometer. Dark should be under 50C / 122F, milk and white under 45C / 113F, and nothing should approach 54C / 130F.
How do you melt chocolate in the microwave without burning it?
Short bursts at half power, with a real stir between each one.
A microwave heats unevenly. The chocolate at the edge of the bowl can scorch while the middle is still solid. You find out when you stir and hit gritty specks.
Stop early. When about 80 per cent has melted, take it out and stir until the rest goes. The bowl holds enough heat to finish the job more gently than another burst would.
White chocolate needs shorter bursts than dark, 20 seconds rather than 30. It has no cocoa solids and plenty of milk powder and sugar, and both catch quickly.
Why does chocolate seize, and can you rescue it?
Chocolate is cocoa solids and sugar suspended in cocoa butter, and water breaks that suspension. Even a drop of condensation off a lid will do it, which is why the bowl and the spatula have to be dry.
Heat makes a similar mess by another route. Past about 54C / 130F the fat separates from the solids and the chocolate goes thick, dull and grainy.
The rescue for seized chocolate is more liquid, not less. A little water is a disaster. Enough water dissolves the sugar and brings the mixture back together.
Add boiling water, warm cream or milk a teaspoon at a time, stirring hard after each one, until it turns glossy again. What you have then is a sauce or a thin ganache. It will not set hard and it will not coat a strawberry, so use it on ice cream or in a cake batter.
Overheated chocolate is harder to save. Tip it into a cool bowl and stir in a handful of chopped unmelted chocolate to bring the temperature down. If it has scorched, the burnt taste stays.
What temperature should chocolate be melted to?
Dark chocolate: melt to 40 to 50C / 113 to 122F, cool to 27C / 81F, then work at 31 to 32C / 88 to 90F. Never go above 34.5C / 94F.
Milk chocolate: melt to 45C / 113F, cool to 27C / 81F, then work at 29 to 30C / 84 to 86F. Never go above 32.5C / 90.5F.
White chocolate: melt to 45C / 113F, cool to 27C / 81F, then work at 28 to 29C / 82 to 84F. Never go above 31.5C / 88.7F.
The cooling and rewarming steps are only for tempering. If you are stirring the chocolate into a batter or drizzling it over a traybake, just stay under the scorching point.
Is a bain-marie better than a microwave?
It is slower and harder to ruin. Both melt the chocolate properly.
Set a metal or glass bowl over a saucepan holding about an inch of barely simmering water. The bowl must not touch the water, and it should sit inside the rim of the pan so steam cannot escape into the chocolate.
Take the bowl off the heat when about two thirds has melted and stir the rest through. The bowl stays hot for a long time.
Dry the base of the bowl before you pour. That water is exactly what seizes the next batch.
The microwave is faster and washes up smaller. The bain-marie is better for large amounts, for white chocolate, and for holding the chocolate liquid while you dip.
Why did my melted chocolate dry dull and streaky?
Because it was melted and not tempered. Cocoa butter can set into six different crystal forms, and only one of them gives a hard set, a clean snap and a shine.
Melted chocolate left to cool on its own sets as a mixture of forms. The result is soft, dull and often streaked with pale grey fat bloom.
Tempering steers the cocoa butter into the one good form. Melt it fully, cool it to about 27C, then warm it back to the working temperature.
The easy home method is seeding. Melt two thirds of the chocolate, take it off the heat, and stir in the last third chopped very small. The unmelted pieces carry the right crystals into the batch.
None of this matters for a sauce, a ganache or chocolate going into a cake. It matters for anything that has to set on the outside of something else.