Melting Chocolate in the Microwave

I recently made Duncan Hines' Red andWhite Velvet Cookies as one my twelve new recipes to try for 2014.

While the recipe calls for a combination of white chocolate premium baking bars (in pieces) and vegetable shortening, melted for dipping half of the cookie into, I chose to take a different path. I chose to melt white chocolate chips in the microwave.

Melting chocolate in the microwave can be a bit tricky as I have learned from doing this time and time again. Heat the chocolate too high too quickly and it will seize. Don't heat the chocolate high enough and you may not be able to finish dipping or drizzling before the chocolate solidifies.

To melt chocolate in a microwave, start with a clean and dry glass bowl. Make certain the pieces of chocolate to be melted are of a small, uniform size, especially if you're not melting baking chips.

Microwave chocolate at 50% power (or medium power) for half of the time instructed by the recipe. Where all microwaves run differently, it's better to melt too little versus too much. Remove bowl from microwave and examine the chocolate. If approximately half of the chocolate looks glossy, stir with a dry spoon or spatula to finish the melting process. If less than half of the chocolate doesn't look glossy, return to microwave and microwave at 50% power (or medium power) for quarter of the time instructed by the recipe.

Once chocolate has completely melted, dip or drizzle as instructed by recipe.

If you need to melt chocolate multiple times for a recipe, such as with my Ginger Nut Clusters recipe, each subsequent melting will take less time as the bowl being used to melt and the melted chocolate already in the bowl will facilitate the melting of subsequent amounts of chocolate.

Oh, and the Red and White Velvet Cookies were a hit even though I changed step 2 in recipe. Instead of forming the dough into a log and refrigerating, I rolled 1” pieces of the dough into a ball, placed them on a non-stick cookie sheet and flattened the ball with the bottom of a drinking glass. The recipe is a keeper.