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Chocolate chips wouldn't melt?
I make candy as a hobby, but don't usually mess with chocolate because I know it can be finicky af. I decided to try making some peanut butter cups as it seemed easy enough, but the stupid chocolate chips would not melt. They went from hard to a chalky mess immediately. I was microwaving them on 30 second intervals at 50% power. I made sure my bowl and spoon I was using to mix were completely dry. Is it because they were sitting opened for a while? I don't know what they want from me
Chocolate is composed of two parts: cocoa solids and cocoa butter. Cocoa butter makes up roughly half of the weight of raw cocoa and it's what lets chocolate melt. If you take out all the butter, you're left with a powder, and the powder doesn't really have any ability to melt (because it's the fatty butter that melts down).
Chocolate chips generally have a low cocoa butter content as well as added ingredients like emulsifiers and stabilizers. All these things make it harder for the chocolate chips to melt down. It's why they don't become liquid when you bake chocolate chip cookies.
Use baking chocolate instead and you'll find that melts down way easier.
Thanks, I will definitely try baking chocolate next time. I was using chocolate chips cause I had some already in my pantry. They were Ghirardelli so I figured they would be okay for melting
It's been a while, but I want to say I've had luck melting the Ghirardelli chips with 60% cacao. I might have had to add a little oil. But I looked at the nutrition info just now, and those chips have almost the same amount of fat as the Ghirardelli dark chocolate melts (6g per 15g of chips). The semisweet and milk chocolate chips only have 3-4g of fat per 15g.
Each time we melt chocolate chips, we add some butter, vegetable oil, or coconut oil, depending on what we're making. Since the chips don't bring much of their own fat/oil, you can just add some.
Did you stir in between? They might not look melted, but they are. If you don't stir they'll just scorch in place.
This is correct. We make a bark style chocolate in the oven and it's always so weird when you pull out the tray. The chocolate chips look completely untouched but then you spread a knife over top and they smear as if they were chocolate syrup. It's so strange and satisfying
Yup, stirred in between every 30 seconds. Maybe 30 seconds is too long?
I've had good luck with Guittard chips, but in general, use chocolate disks or chop good-quality bar chocolate if you want a smooth melt. Valrhona is a top notch brand if you can get it.
Yes, 30 seconds is too long. Chocolate doesn't have much moisture content, and microwave ovens will quickly overheat anything that's got too little water. Also make sure your bowl is absolutely dry - getting water into your chocolate will cause it to seize.
Depending on the volume of chocolate you're melting, do 5 - 10 seconds on half power, stir and repeat. You'll notice that after 3 - 5 cycles, the chips or chopped chocolate will start to get sticky and clump together. 2 - 3 more cycles of heating and stirring, the whole mass will be warm enough to melt. Microwaving works great when you've mastered this technique.
I believe this is called "seizing" when chocolate goes from melty to weird and grainy. I've read that melting chocolate in a double boiler style setup is the best way to avoid this. I've used a metal mixing bowl on top of a small pot of boiling water as a makeshift double boiler before. It works.
I was under the impression that a double-boiler was more to prevent burning the chocolate than anything. Seizing is caused by moisture coming into contact with the chocolate which seems like it would be more of a potential issue with a double boiler than a microwave?
Yeah maybe I'm misremembering the reason the makeshift double boiler setup worked better. Melting chocolate like that isn't something I do often, I had the same problem as OP using the microwave.
When using a double boiler to melt chocolate, the trick is to wrap a cotton kitchen towel around the chocolate bowl under the rim, then set that on the pot of simmering (not boiling) water. It provides just enough of a seal against water vapor getting into the top bowl.
Chocolate is a suspension of very finely ground starch in fat, stabilized with proteins (usually dairy). If you get much moisture in the mix, the starch particles can't hold onto their fat coating completely. The starch particles start to swell and gel together, and the fats break loose as far less appetizing grease.
I’m not sure what they add, but some chocolate chips are designed not to melt but to retain their shape so that you have the recognisable chip shape in your cookie rather than a blob. Perhaps you got some of these? Here in aus we have chocolate chips (retain shape) and chocolate melts (which melt, as the name implies)
Cadburys flakes are the same, I believe, so you can’t use one to make a fancy mocha as I discovered when I tried it! I just had a coffee with a warm flake in it
It's usually thickeners like carageenan. Usually put in place because the expensive cocoa butter has been replaced by cheap vegetable oils that don't hold up the same way.
Chocolate is one of those ingredients one should be picky about. Good chocolate can make an OK dessert into a fantastic one.
It’s not a case of cheaping out, though. Most chocolate chips are designed to keep their shape - it isn’t a byproduct of changing the ingredients it’s the purpose of it.
However, you are right about less cocoa butter (according to google)
That’s weird. It makes me want to avoid eating chocolate chips from now on.
Why do you find that weird? Because of the lower cocoa butter? It’s really just another form of chocolate, like how white chocolate is very high in cocoa butter
Ha, I don’t like white chocolate either. Honestly though, I never really cared for chocolate chips. They ruin pancakes and while I do enjoy the cookies, they are far from my favorite cookie.
I never get good results from my microwave and always end using a bain-marie, takes longer but works flawlessly
I haven't done it myself, but I've heard great things about the sous vide method for chocolate tempering. It's supposed to be much more reliable, though it can take a while for large batches.