Rescuing Seized Chocolate

Chocolate is awesome!

So people say before they try working with it. Every baker or chef knows that chocolate is fussy, finicky, and for a beginner slightly intimidating to work with.

But what a lot a people don't realize, is that as fussy as chocolate is, it's also surprisingly forgiving.

Here is one way to rescue chocolate after accidently introducing a liquid.

Overheating can cause chocolate to seize as well, if that happens try adding fresh chocolate chunks to bring it back. this will not work if a liquid has been introduced.

• Seized Chocolate :(
• Boiling Water or Hot Cream
• A Spoon or Whisk, a spoon is better for small batches
• A teaspoon

Your melting chocolate, you have great things in mind for it, maybe you want to build a chocolate mansion, maybe your decorating cookies, or maybe you just want to eat warm chocolate with a spoon.

Suddenly! one way or the other your plans are thwarted, your lovely glossy chocolate is a grainy, congealed mass.

There are many ways this can happen; your bowl and utensils weren't properly dry, steam from your double boiler condensed into the bowl, you got impatient and covered the chocolate with a lid, you added some extract or liquor, your making ganache... the list goes on.

Now, here comes the sad part, There is no way to get your chocolate back the way it was before, you can't get it back to the hard, sharp, and solid state, that it was just a few minutes ago, but that does not mean that you have to throw it out.

By following the few simple steps below you can give your chocolate a second chance.

If you don't have time to save your chocolate now then just scrape the mess onto parchment paper and let harden, you can heat it back up and continue the rescue later.

Now that you have accepted that all that is left for you to do is to move on, take some boiling water/or hot cream and whisk in a teaspoon of it.

Keep the chocolate warm, don't let it cool down or this will not work. I keep mine over the double boiler but with the water not boiling, I don't want to overheat it.

After you've added the first teaspoon it will look awful, don't despair.

Add another teaspoon, now it will start to look even worse, Oil will start to pool at the bottom of the bowl, you have to trust me when i say that there is still hope.

Keep repeating step 2,

Add a teaspoon of water/cream, Whisk/stir the living daylights out of it, add another teaspoon of water/cream...

Slowly you will see the shine come back into the sad, little pile.

Now, I did not have a lot of chocolate, so after adding 6 teaspoons of water, it was looking like itself again, but you might have to add more or less, depending on what type of chocolate you used and how much of it you have.

Now that you've reached this step it's important to understand that what you have now is a ganache, if that is what you were going for, Great! you can continue on your happy way.

But if you were planning on using this chocolate for adding to baking or making delicate chocolate decor, then I'm sorry, this chocolate isn't going to work anymore, as you've added a lot of liquid its not going to harden the way it was meant to, and work like the recipe planned.

This is not to say that it isn't going to harden as it cools, depending on when you stopped adding water/cream it's still going to be quite firm, its just not going to be a hard and strong as it was before.

That is ok, you can find a hundred uses for the chocolate that you've rescued, drizzling it over cookes, using to cover a cake, making hot chocolate, eating it warm with a spoon, and what i'm planning on doing, using it as a fruit dip.

So, go forth my Friends, and enjoy your Chocolate. As I will enjoy these apples with mine.