What Is The Best Knife To Use For Cutting Chocolate?
Chocolate bars and chips each contain cocoa butter, cocoa solids, sugar, and an emulsifier, like lecithin. Those ratios change depending on the use. For chips to maintain their shape before and after baking, they contain less cocoa butter, which has a low melting point, and more emulsifier. On the other hand, bars don't need an emulsifier's stabilization, so they have a higher proportion of cocoa butter, making them perfect for eating and melting.
While chocolate chips are perfect for cookies — their uniform shape folds into the dough evenly and easily, plus, they hold their shape after baking — that attribute disqualifies them as the best candidate for melting chocolate for something like a mousse, or icing. In those cases, it's best to buy bars of chocolate, explains Martha Stewart. Unfortunately, a full bar of chocolate doesn't melt evenly. And, even if the bar is segmented for easy breaking, sometimes you want smaller pieces — so, you may need to cut the pieces to a specific size.
To cut, or not to cut
Chocolate bars melt more smoothly, and more easily than chips. Even better, as Martha Stewart explains, bars can be had anywhere along the chocolate spectrum, from white to the darkest chocolate. Even large supermarkets with an extensive range of chocolate chip options can't compete with the number of bars to choose from.
If you want the freedom to choose whatever chocolate you want, those bars will need to be cut. While Baking with chocolate can be tricky, melting chocolate is especially problematic. A low melting point means the line between melted and burnt is pretty thin, explains Stack Exchange. So, cutting bars into smaller pieces that will melt quickly, and evenly is crucial. Even if this hand-picked chocolate is destined for a cookie, it needs to be chopped down to a usable size.
When it comes to cutting chocolate, chef's knives tend to slide off versus getting a bite on the bar. Plus, some bars of chocolate are large enough to make a typical knife unwieldy, so what kind of knife is best?
To cut chocolate, you need to get a grip
You need a knife that's large enough to accommodate oversize bars, but one that can also get a grip on a waxy bar. Cooks Illustrated suggests using your bread knife. The serrations bite into the bar easily, while the extra length provides leverage for dealing with bulky blocks. A YouTube video by America's Test Kitchen demonstrates the technique of chipping away at the corners of a chocolate bar for feathery shards of chocolate. Adjust the cut for larger pieces suitable for folding into cookie dough or brownie batter.
Those shards of chocolate might be just the upgrade your cookies need. As Anne Wolf, the Head Chocolatier at EHChocolatier in Massachusetts explains to Martha Stewart, the classic dollop shape of chips is "not necessarily the ideal shape for the tongue or mouth." That shape has more to do with production processes than the ultimate chocolate-eating experience. After all, the chocolate chip cookie predates the origin of chocolate chips. They go on to suggest that the odd shapes and sizes will only enhance the eating experience by adding variety and surprise to each bite.