How to melt chocolate recipe

Melt your chocolate the professionals way to end up with rich, shiny, melted chocolate

How to melt chocolate instructions

The ideal equipment to melt chocolate is a bain marie, or you can now buy small chocolate melting machines for home use. However with a bit of care and patience we think that good results can be obtained using a simple saucepan and bowl.

White chocolate is more difficult to melt than milk or dark chocolate, this is because white chocolate is not really chocolate as such, because it's missing the cocoa concentration. If white chocolate is melted too quickly it will almost certainly split, therefore extreme care needs to be taken when melting, and good quality white melting chocolate should always be used, rather than simply melting a bar of ordinary white chocolate.

Ingredients

dark, milk or white chocolate, quantity as required for recipe

Directions


  1. Place a small amount of water into a saucepan then place a bowl over the top of the saucepan, a large bowl should be used so that it does not sit too low into the saucepan. The base of the bowl must not touch the water at any time during the process.
  2. Place the chocolate to be melted, broken into small pieces, into the bowl and heat the water until it is very gently simmering, not boiling.
  3. Avoid stirring the chocolate too much during melting and make sure that condensation from the simmering water does not get into the chocolate, as this will make the chocolate seize up.
  4. Once the majority of the chocolate appears to have melted, remove the pan from the heat and allow the last few soft pieces to melt naturally from the heat already present.
  5. Stir the melted chocolate well to ensure that it is completely smooth, it is then ready for use in recipes, confectionery or for dipping.