A Reader Asks: I’ve heard that it’s a good idea to warm your chocolate in the microwave before eating it, but only for certain chocolates which can hold their shape. Which ones would those be? Well, none, actually ...

... microwave ovens are far too imprecise a tool to warm chocolate evenly. Every microwave oven has hot spots where the chocolate will hear up faster than in other areas, and chocolates with water in them (including milk/cream in truffles) will heat up faster than solid chocolates.

Cocoa butter starts melting at about 92 degrees F and should be completely melted around 98 degrees. If you’re like me, you try to keep the house around 68-72 degrees F and that’s just about the perfect temperature to eat chocolate - milk chocolate, dark chocolate, truffles, you name it. If the chocolate gets too much warmer than this (say, above 78-80 degrees) it becomes a gooey mess and too much colder than this and the texture is too hard and the volatile aromatics are released too slowly and the smell component of eating chocolate is significantly diminished.

If you really want to warm up your chocolate to above 72 degrees or so, find a spot in your kitchen/house that is the temperature you want to eat the chocolate at and place the chocolate in that spot for a while to slowly warm up. Putting chocolate on the counter in the sun (or any place that is substantially warmer than the temperature you’re aiming for), is very likely to melt the chocolate and ruin it.

When is it okay to use a microwave? When you’re melting quantities of couverture for tempering, the microwave is preferred by some people over a double boiler as there is no possibility of steam condensing into the melting chocolate causing it to sieze.

Previous Questions and Answers:

1. Hi, I wanted to know if you have ever tried Esther Price assorted chocolates which are made in Dayton, Ohio. Our family has found them EXCELLENT! Jack
   Posted by  on  07/27  at  05:47 PM