Kitchen Hacks: How to Melt Chocolate

When it comes to melting chocolate, the microwave can be your best friend or your worst enemy. It's great for when you need to melt chocolate in a hurry, but if you're not careful, things can go awry.

You should always melt your chocolate in baby steps, when it's in the microwave. Microwave on low and in short increments, stirring in between. This will help prevent your chocolate from burning!

What you need:
1. Microwave safe bowl
2. Wooden spoon
3. Chocolate

How to do it:
1. Pour the desired amount of chocolate into your microwave-safe bowl.

2. On your microwave's lowest setting, heat your chocolate for 30-40 seconds. For really small pieces or flakes of chocolate, only microwave for 15-20 seconds.

3. Remove the bowl from the microwave, and stir slowly with a wooden spoon. Return to the microwave for 10-15 seconds on low.

4. Repeat step 3 until the chocolate is fully melted.

Note: If you're concerned about overheating or burning the chocolate, just add a little bit of vegetable oil, coconut oil, or butter. Adding a little bit of fat to your chocolate helps it stay smooth. Typically, dark chocolate melts better in the microwave than milk chocolate.

You might know this method as tempering, and you've probably heard a double boiler referred to as a Bain Marie by professional chefs.

By using a double boiler over the stove, you will be able to melt chocolate easily for your homemade dessert recipes. This whole process should take you about 5 to 10 minutes entirely. This is an easy way to melt chocolate for any fondue recipes or to drizzle over your desserts.

What you need:
1. A pot
2. A glass bowl (wider than the pot)
3. Water
4. Chocolate

How you do it:
1. Fill the pot up with about 1 inch of water and bring to a simmer. It should be lightly steaming

2. Place your glass bowl (or other heatproof bowl) over the mouth of the pot. It is important that the water you have poured into the pot does not touch the bottom of the bowl.

3. Pour your choice of chocolate into the heatproof bowl, little by little.

4. Stir the chocolate often as it softens. This prevents the chocolate from stiffening or burning. Chocolate can easily overheat and lose consistency, so be sure to not leave your chocolate unattended.

5. You can remove your bowl from the heat at as soon as there are little to no pieces of unmelted chocolate. (If you have unmelted chunks, stir them in after removing the bowl from the heat. The residual heat will melt them entirely.)

Note: If you plan to use the tempering method, avoid adding water to the bowl. This will make your melted chocolate grainy and unusable, especially if you plan to use your chocolate for dipping or frosting. If this happens, don't worry; you can hadd a little bit of vegetable oil to try to preserve that consistency of the chocolate.

Sometimes your chocolate will seize up or become lumpy and grainy during the melting process. This can happen in both the microwave and in a Bain Marie. But don't worry! You can fix it.

To re-emulsify chocolate in a Bain Marie:
1. Remove the glass bowl from the heat immediately.
2. Slowly fold fat* to the chocolate. Add this in 1 tablespoon at a time.

To re-emulsify chocolate in the microwave:
1. Remove the bowl from the microwave.
2. Add 1 tablespoon of fat* to your seized chocolate and return to the microwave.
3. Repeat step 2 until melted.

*Vegetable oil, shortening, coconut oil, and butter work well for this. This will not save it completely, and it won't get smooth enough for fondue, but you can still use it to make frosting or drizzle over some cookies!

Note: White chocolate and milk chocolate are more likely to seize up during the melting process, so keep you eyes peeled if you're using these types.

Put your chocolate melting knowledge to use! Below are some of our favorite dessert recipes that use melted chocolate to add that rich, creamy flavor we all go crazy for.

Melted chocolate is perfect for decorating homemade sugar cookies, dipping awesome and sweet oreo balls, or looking for ways to sweeten up any of your easy to make desserts.

1. Espresso Bacon Bark

2. Chocolate Covered Strawberries

3. Easy Chocolate Covered Marshmallows

4. Frozen Banana Bites