How to Chop up a Chocolate Bar

Chopped Chocolate Bar

There's definitely a knack to chopping up a chocolate bar. If you just try to slice it, breaks unpredictably. Put any force behind it and chocolate ends up going everywhere. Nobody wants that.

So the way to get the chocolate chopped without losing your chocolate on the floor is this. Instead of trying to "cut" the chocolate with the knife, you actually use the knife more like a tiny widge, splitting the chocolate with gentle but firm pressure.

Let's try it. First, get yourself a cutting board, a bar of chocolate and a chef's knife, and Mr. Magpie will demonstrate.

The key thing here is to use the long, wide chef's knife, so that you can use both hands on the knife. Keeping the knife parallel to your body, grip the handle in one hand, and press down with your palm on the back of the blade at the edge of the chocolate, like so:

Technique for Chopping Chocolate Bar with Knife

Then, rock the knife back and forth, alternately pressing with each palm, and work your way down the bar. It's the rocking and pressing that gives you the action you need.

Chopping Chocolate Bar with Knife

The knife will wedge through the chocolate, causing it to crack along the knife lines (more or less), roughly cutting it into bars. It'll crack elsewhere along the way, giving you irregular strips and chunks.

You can then turn the cutting board and give the bar a rough pass in the other direction, and voila! Chopped chocolate.

Chopped Chocolate Bar

You can sprinkle this on cakes, bake it in muffins, or just eat it. There's a lot of chocolate dust and shavings mixed in as well, which really gets lots of chocolate flavor into anything you mix it with. If you want, you can keep passing over it the same way, making the chocolate chunks finer and finer until you have only crumbs to use as a topping or crumb.

Yum.

Do you ever use chopped chocolate? How do you chop it?

Enjoy!