How do I make chocolate liquify enough to pour a thin layer over cookies?!
Answers: I want to melt white chocolate, add some food coloring to make it different colors, pour it over cookies, and then have it solidify again to form a layer of chocolate over the cookie. Sort of like icing. If you've ever seen the sugar cookies Starbucks has, that's the idea. I tried it tonight with melting chocolate but it never got runny enough to pour over the cookies, and then it got hard again while I was trying to melt it! It was a horrible sticky gooey mess. I just want to know how to do it :( Thanks to anyone who might be able to help.
What your chocolate did was "seize". Seizing is when the chocolate you are melting suddenly becomes grainy and firms up, looking like a dull, thick paste.. Chocolate is composed of fine, dry particles (cocoa and sugar) and fat (cocoa butter). When you melt chocolate, a few drops of water or even steam will moisten the dry particles and cause them to stick together and form a dull, dry, grainy mass, called seizing.
Having the burner on too high a temperature and melting the chocolate too fast can cause it to seize, too.
Now it's seized, you can't use it to drizzle over cookes, but you can use it in recipes for baking things, or make a sauce from it.
Some tips to prevent it from happening again:
1. If using a double boiler, keep the water to a simmer, not a rolling boil so it won't splash onto the chocolate
2. Don't use a wooden spoon to stir melted chocolate because it could hold moisture.
3. The heat-proof glass or metal bowl you are using to melt the chocolate in must be DRY.
4. Do not even place a cover over the bowl or the container of chocolate. Moisture will condense on the inside of the lid, and cause seizing.
5. Do not have the burner too high.
use a double-boiler over low heat. it will keep the chocolate liquid and pliable without the risk of burning (as long as you keep water in the boiler).
they make melting pots especially for chocolate so it will stay melted and not turn back hard
take your chocolate and melt it over a medium heat in a double boiler. also you can add a teaspoon of crisco with it or parafin gives it a shiny appearance when it hardens and will keep it more liquid when you are drizzling it over your cookies.
Nashgirl is right - break chocolate into smaller pieces - place in a (heat-proof) bowl. Place bowl over (NOT IN) saucepan of water and heat until chocolate starts to melt. Pour chocolate over cookies. If you ad colouring at same time as pouring - you should get a swirly or stripey colouring.
Voila!!! and can I come and join you - sounds delicious!!!
Try those chocolate Fountain things..
they look real convenient.
if your chocolate didn't go smooth you might have added the wrong liquid...even a tiny drop of water will mess up the consistency of the chocolate...you could add oil or butter to make the chocolate thinner....as for the sugar cookies in starbucks...the icing probably isn't even white chocolate at all...most icing used in sugar cookies is royal icing..check out a recipe for that...oh yeh and what probably messed up your white chocolate is food coloring...they're mostly water based
You should add a little paraffin to your chocolate when you melt it. Melt at a (very low) heat setting.