Chocolate Bark Candy Recipes - Chocolate Chocolate and More! (2024)

FAQs

How do you make melted chocolate more liquid? ›

To thin melted chocolate, add a small amount of neutral oil, like vegetable oil or cocoa butter, stirring gently until it reaches the desired consistency. Melt slowly to avoid overheating, and keep water out to prevent the chocolate from seizing.

Melting chocolate with milk can accelerate the melting process and make your chocolate more creamy and rich and less bitter to taste.

To prevent this from happening, let your chocolate bark set in a cool but room-temperature spot in the house — don't stick it in the fridge or the freezer to try and speed things up. Similarly, you should store the chocolate bark in a cool room-temperature place like the pantry.

To keep your chocolate bark from melting, a proper tempering process is necessary. Tempering is a process where the chocolate is brought to certain temperatures, which essentially optimizes the form of the cocoa butter fat crystals and keeps it stable.

Sometimes chocolate melts to a satiny pool of liquid chocolate, and sometimes it becomes a grainy mess. Chocolate being melted, simply can't tolerate small drops of water. In this case, the steam escaping from the bottom of the double boiler is sufficient to make chocolate seize.

Seized chocolate occurs when the chocolate you're melting comes into contact with moisture. Chocolate itself doesn't contain any moisture, so adding a small amount of liquid can disrupt the melting process.

Adding butter to chocolate not only improves the taste, but also the texture. What is this? Butter is added to chocolate to provide extra fat and so that the chocolate mixes even better with any other additional ingredients. Furthermore, it can be used to release seized chocolate and thin out liquified chocolate.

Chocolate ganache is a 1:1 mixture of chocolate and warm cream. Stirred until smooth, silky, and shiny, ganache is a staple in any baker's kitchen. It's not only easy and quick, it's uniquely versatile. Chocolate ganache can be a filling, dip, spread, frosting, topping, or layer in a cake.

Choosing your chocolate

Chocolate melts faster the higher the percentage of cocoa butter and fat, so dark chocolate melts the fastest. Once melted, it's glossy and has a good viscosity. Good-quality dark chocolate with no less than 70 per cent cocoa solids will leave you with a darker, richer flavour.

That's because your chocolate wasn't tempered. Tempered chocolate sets at room temperature and has a snap just like a chocolate bar you buy from the store.

Why isn't my chocolate bark hardening? ›

It could be that your room temperature is too high. If the temperature is over 68 F, this can cause problems. The ideal setting temperature is between 65 and 68 degrees Fahrenheit. It could also be that the chocolate wasn't tempered, because untempered chocolate takes quite a bit longer to set.

You don't add ingredients to chocolate to make it harden, you temper it by heating it to a specific temperature, cooling it to another temperature, then heating it again. This causes the chocolate to crystalize in a way that leaves it hard and shiny. The temperatures are different for different kinds of chocolate.

I recommend Ghirardelli, Guittard, or Baker's brand bars of chocolate when making bark.

Generally, any melted couverture chocolate will harden once it cools down. But for coating applications, we always recommend that you temper your chocolate first, as this gives you a glossy appearance and a fine snap when biting or breaking into the food item.

Dark chocolate typically contains the highest cocoa content of the chocolate types, with around 86% or more cocoa solids. This makes it more resistant to melting. It has a melting point ranging from 113 to 120 degrees Fahrenheit (45 to 48 degrees Celsius).

Cornflour/Cornstarch: Mix a small amount with cold milk or water to create a smooth paste. Whisk this into your hot chocolate towards the end of the cooking process until it thickens.

Tempering Chocolate by Microwave:

Add remaining chocolate in small amounts while stirring. Be sure that the pieces are completely melted before adding more. The chocolate will thicken and become cool, shiny, and smooth as you continue stirring and “seeding” it by adding additional small amounts.

Chocolate and water don't go together. Even a small splash of water in your melting chocolate will cause it to seize, becoming stiff and grainy instead of smooth and silky. And sadly, there's no way to completely undo the damage.

Funnily enough, it's super simple. First boil some water. Second, very slowly, as in 1-2 tsp at a time add in the boiling water and whisk the chocolate vigorously until the mixture is smooth again. The hot water will essentially melt the clumps back to a liquid consistency.