New at fondue and don't know what happened - my chocolate fondue broke!

[tess]

Santa brought an electric fondue pot - the cheese fondue came out fine but the chocolate broke. The chocolate recipe I followed came from the book with the fondue pot.

Basically it was half-and-half and heavy cream - heat till a good simmer. Turn heat down, add bittersweet or semisweet chocolate - I did half bitter, half semi. The bittersweet was GHirardelli 60% cocoa bittersweeet chocolate chips. The semisweet was Nestle's miniature chips.

At first it looked fine, then it started to look thick and clumpy so I added more heavy cream and that made it smooth again. Then after a few minutes it totally broke - the chocolate was almost lumpy looking and there was a layer of what appeared to be oil. I tried to stir it up but to no avail. I didn't want to add more cream. It tasted fine - just looked bad.

The heat settings were at #5 to get the cream heated, then turn doen to #3.5 while adding the chocolate and eating. So I know it didn't burn....

What do you think happened? Did I use the wrong chocolate? Why did it break?

Thanks,

Tess

 

[zuri]

Why your chocolate misbehaved === I think ....

Chocolate is funny-peculiar. Not everyone might agree with me, but I think the problem lay with the half-and-half. Somehow there was/is a percentage of water in the half-and-half, and melting chocolate hates water.

I think that you'll have to start all over again. To be safe, don't use chocolate chips either, because they are not of a very high quality -- not enough cocoa butter in them. Buy eating chocolate of a good quality.

I think you should change the recipe a little, and use your stove and NOT the fondue pot for melting the choc sauce. (You don't know the pot as well yet, and you'll have more control on your stove. Then afterwards pour the sauce into your heated fondue pot).

Use only cream, break up the chocolate, and put into the cold cream. Then heat very carefully while stirring. Don't stop stirring. The chocolate won't "break" in the cream, and if you watch it and not overheat it, the chocolate will melt slowly. Rather take it off the heat the second you see a simmer-bubble break the surface. THEN keep on stirring, until you have a smooth mixture. I'm sure that will work.

Just make sure the sauce does not actually boil in the fondue pot. Later on, when you're more used to the heat settings on your gift, you could try doing the sauce in it again. (Well, that's what I would do ...)

Some of those recipes one gets with a new appliance are not all that reliable.