How to fix burnt chocolate

October 19th, 2021

Chocolates can help you at your worst  moods and stress; it is the ultimate comfort food that can never disappoint. 

To top that, our gourmet and luxurious chocolate collection at Melt Chocolates takes care of the quality of this experience. After all, you should leave no details behind while indulging in something as heavenly as chocolate. 

That said, there’s nothing better than having freshly made chocolate desserts at home. The freshly melted chocolate and its smell is something that brightens up your mood and lifts your spirits to get through the day. 

However, with profound experiences of perfecting recipes, there comes a huge gap dedicated to unavoidable mistakes, seized chocolates being one of them – and that is what today’s blog is about. 

At Melt, our expert chocolatiers have shared their words of wisdom; their outlook and a few useful ways to fix seized chocolate and of course, how you can avoid it in the first place. 

Let’s look at it! 

What is Seized Chocolate?

If you’ve noticed the quickness with which the chocolate melts if left out in the sun, you’ll know how sensitive this ingredient is. 

Ideally, the heat required to melt white and milk chocolate is close to 110 F and for dark chocolate, the maximum you can reach is 120 F. However, once you overdo it, the chocolate begins to loose its rich and shiny texture, beginning to lump in your container. It will turn into a muddy and sludgy texture, completely unacceptable for any recipes out there. 

To rescue this chocolate, you need to think on your feet by quickly bringing in measures to cool it down.

Something as simple as a drop of water can seize your melted chocolate and to regain it, a little extra fat is required, which can be procured from vegetable oil, butter or cocoa butter. 

Make sure you are adding fat in small amounts, approximately 1 tablespoon for every 6 ounces and stirring constantly to make the granules disappear. 

Other than this, here are some of the precise ways to fix seized chocolates.

1. Add More Chocolate

As mentioned above, the lumpy mixture is a result of overheating. To fix seized chocolate, you need to quickly cool it down to regain the original consistency. 

One of the best ways to go about this is by adding more chopped chunks of chocolate to fix the seized chocolate. This ensures that the chocolate at high temperature is supported by room temperature chunks of chocolate; to retain its true melted consistency. 

Pro Tip – Ideally, add ¼ cup to ½ cup of fresh cocoa buttons and stir continuously until the chunks have been well incorporated.

2. Add Oil 

Consider this as a backup of the backup. This means, if adding chunks of chocolate still has no effects on the seized chocolate, you can simply add a tablespoon of vegetable oil to the mixture. Although, ensure that you’re stirring it thoroughly until it’s mixed well. 

Vegetable oil is extremely helpful to fix seized chocolates in two ways; firstly, it has properties that make it easier to mix well with chocolate and secondly, oil has the shine that allows chocolate to regain the silky melted texture.  

3. Use Dairy 

Another sure shot way to revive the original texture of the melted chocolate is by adding dairy products such as hot cream and stirring until it’s smooth again.

The resulting mixture, comparatively, will have a thinner consistency than desired and you might have to alter the recipe. 

In other words, cream with chocolate will give you a chocolate ganache that can be used in multiple recipes such as lava cake or as a sauce for puddings, sundaes and so on. 

Visit Melt Chocolates to Place Your Orders 

We, at Melt Chocolates, have always prioritised the quality of experiences and chocolates that we offer. Having been in the industry for so long, we have come across many mistakes and have tackled them with grace. 

Our learning experiences have instances of many of these and you will be informed along the way. That said, we even offer subscription boxes for your convenience. 

Reach us out on our website for more information today!

Obviously you can no longer use it as set chocolate but it is makes a great ganache for cakes or chocolate sauce for puddings.

Watch the video for a demonstration.

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT

I have been busy over the last year planning, writing and overseeing the photography and layout for my first ever cookbook! There are heaps of my favourite dessert recipes in there with a chapter on pastries, ice-cream, yummy cakes, artistic desserts and of course chocolate desserts. Each chapter has its own intro explaining the food science that you'll need to know for success every time. Booksellers where you can purchase your very own copy: http://bit.ly/ARcookbook

All recipe quantities in the book are in grams, ounces and cups.

Chocolate is prone to seizing or tightening up. It happens when you overheat and burn it (in which case you must toss the chocolate out and start over) and when you let the chocolate come in contact with a little moisture—which is why we are always taught to keep chocolate dry.

But chocolate also seizes when you don’t add enough water or moisture. 

Harold McGee describes the phenomenon in very simple terms: There is no moisture at all in chocolate, so you might think of it as though it were a bowl of flour. If you add a small amount of liquid, you will get a thick paste. But add a lot more liquid and the paste will become fluid.

So it goes with chocolate: It’s incompatible with small amounts of liquid but can get on famously with large quantities of it, all depending on what you are trying to do with the chocolate in the first place. 

Here are 2 situations when you may find yourself with seized chocolate—and how to fix it:

Scenario 1

With visions of dipping your own homemade truffles, cookies, or candied citrus peel in pure melted chocolate*—or just piping "Happy Birthday" on a birthday cake—you chop a bar of chocolate and start to melt it gently in a water bath or double boiler. Instead of producing a bowl of satiny smooth molten chocolate, you suddenly have a bowl of dull sludge so thick that you can hardly stir it much less dip anything into it. 

Congratulations, you’ve just seized your chocolate.  

Remember the rule about keeping chocolate dry? You’ve just broken it. 

Your chocolate is seized because somewhere along the way, you’ve allowed it to come in contact with something wet. Maybe your hands or the cutting board or the knife were wet when you were handling or chopping the chocolate; maybe you put the chocolate in a wet bowl or stirred it with a wet spatula; or—in a burst of creative genius—maybe you decided to stir a couple tablespoons of liqueur (which is wet) into the chocolate for flavor.

Although you can't use the chocolate for its original purpose now, which was coating sweets with pure melted chocolate, you can use the seized chocolate to make brownies, chocolate sauce, mousse, or any dessert that calls for melting chocolate with some butter or a greater quantity of liquid. 

If you are not ready to do that immediately, just scrape the seized mess onto a piece of wax or parchment paper or foil. Let it dry and harden (it will get ugly but this is no cause for alarm) and wrap it up until you need it. Then start over with fresh chocolate for your dipping project.

*Some people suggest adding shortening or oil to loosen the chocolate, but I don’t usually want shortening or oil in chocolate that I used for dipping, so I don’t recommend this tactic.

Scenario 2

In this scenario, you are making chocolate sauce, a simple mixture of chocolate and cream heated gently until the chocolate is melted and the mixture is smooth. You are following a recipe; what could go wrong? 

But as you stir, once again you suddenly have a bowl of dull sludge, too thick to be a sauce and to stiff to fold into the rest of the mousse ingredients. 

Congratulations, you’ve just seized the chocolate (again)!  

This time, it's because you don’t have enough liquid to allow the chocolate to melt and become fluid in the liquid—think about the flour bowl example above. Although you were following a recipe, chances are the chocolate seized because you used a chocolate with a higher cacao percentage than that which was used to create the original recipe. The higher cacao percentage, the more liquid is required for sauces and ganaches and other chocolate mixtures that involve liquid. Stirring in a little more of the same liquid—or even water—will loosen the mixture and restore its gloss and fluidity.

Just beware that if the added liquid is cold, it may at first exacerbate the problem because it will chill the chocolate; let it warm up in the bowl before you start stirring. 

Photos by James Ransom and Alpha Smoot