Chopping chocolate

[jgm]

As a home baker, I occasionally have to chop up chocolate bars to make chocolate chips, chunks, and dice small enough to melt eaily in hot pie fillings.

I found out that my food processor isn't much help. It just rounds off the corners of the pieces as they bounce off the blades.

I usually get out my chef's knife and just start trimming off corners until I work my way through the whole thing.

Any tips, hints, or tricks for making this job easier?

Edited September 18, 2007 by jgm (log)

[judiu]

Double heavy duty plastic bag and a hammer? Maybe a "rubber" mallet, like the body shop guys use, so as to not tear the bag? HTH

[Anna N]

I use a junk chef's knife that has a fine serrated edge. Picked it up for $1 at a garage sale but I have seen them in dollar stores and such. They are utterly useless as real knives but seem to cut through chocolate reasonably well.

I know there are also specialized tools for chopping chocolate and I am sure someone else will soon offer better suggestions. But I doubt that chopping chocolate will go very high on your favourite list of things to do!

[patsikes]

Yep. I have a couple serrated 14 inch chefs knifes for the job. The ones I have came from the restaurant supply store with a white plastic handle in the 4-6 dollar range.

If you use those flexible cutting boards, which we do when working with chocolate as it is easier to transfer the shards, use two at a time or put a flexible one on top of a regular cutting board otherwise your counter could be full if little pin holes from the serrations.

Patrick