How to Melt Chocolate in the Microwave

Adding a touch of melted chocolate to cookies, strawberries, pretzels, or marshmallows is an easy to way to elevate your favorite sweet (or salty) treat. But have you ever hastily tossed a bowl of chocolate into the microwave, set it to one minute, and come back to find burned bits of chocolate around the bowl and big clumps of chocolate unmelted? Oh, no? I guess that’s just me.

To avoid my mishaps, and to end up with perfectly melted chocolate every time, use small, uniform pieces and heat the chocolate in short bursts of time. This is the foolproof method whenever you need melted chocolate for dipping holiday cookies and wafer cookies, coating chocolate truffles, or adorning berries.

• It’s the quickest and easiest way to melt chocolate. While you can melt chocolate in a double boiler on the stovetop or over direct heat in a saucepan, the quickest and easiest way is to melt it in the microwave.
• You’ll get perfectly melted chocolate every time. The key is to use small, uniform pieces and heat the chocolate in short bursts of time.

• Chocolate chips: Chocolate chips do well here, because they are petite and all the same size. After testing more than a dozen brands of chocolate chips, our hands-down favorite was Guittard’s Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips.
• Chocolate blocks and bars: Guittard’s Chocolate Baking Wafers was a repeat winner in our Kitchn Essentials list for its rich flavor and fair-trade practices.

1. Chop the chocolate in small, uniform pieces. Chocolate blocks and bars should be finely chopped for melting.
2. Transfer the chopped chocolate to a glass bowl. Glass insulates the chocolate better, preventing scorching.
3. Microwave the chocolate in 30-second bursts and stir between each. For the first burst or two, stirring will feel arbitrary, but by the third, you see plainly that the edges of the bowl are melting faster than the center and distributing their heat will melt everything more evenly and quickly.

This microwave method won’t keep your chocolate in temper (that is, it won’t set up snappy and shiny for coating candies or cookies to be kept at room temperature). You’ll need our cooking lesson on how to temper chocolate for that.

But this melting method can be used for chocolate destined for batter, or for topping and coating refrigerated treats like homemade truffles, chocolate-covered cherries, or chocolate-covered strawberries.

• Milk Chocolate Bundt Cake
• Chocolate Marble Cake
• Chocolate Crinkle Cookies
• Nutty Banana Sheet Cake
• Pinwheel Sugar Cookies