Easy No-Mess Chocolate Chunks From Chocolate Bars

How to make easy to clean up no-mess chocolate chunks from bars of chocolate. This is for all those chocolate chunk recipes, people who have allergies and can only find chocolate bars (cannot find chocolate chips) and those people who would like to make chocolate chunk cookies out of their favorite chocolate bars. Also is great for melting chocolate in a double boiler, the smaller the chunks the faster the chocolate melts.

I have "kid" tested this with a 4 year old and they could break the bar a few times but I ended up doing most of the work. Thus kids please have an adult help with this activity.

Step 1: How Many Chocolate Bars?

Figure out how many chocolate bars are needed for the recipe.

Most chocolate bars I have used are about 3-3.5 oz and recipes will call for 12-16 oz of chocolate chips. So to replace chips one for one to chunks you will need to break up 4-6 bars. I have found one to two bars broken up works find in the recipes I make. (I like them on the lighter side of chocolate.) I normally add chunks until the batter looks "full" or it looks like I will get 4+ small chunks per small spoon dropped cookie.

Step 2: Materials

Materials needed:

Chocolate bars*

Plastic bags (gallon freezer bags are less likely to break and will keep this "no-mess")

Large metal spoon**

*Calculated from previous step.

**Plastic will not work well due to the plastic absorbing the force.

Step 3: Freeze the Chocolate

The chocolate bars need to be frozen (over night). The bars will not break well into little pieces if not frozen through.

Step 4: Put Into Bag

Unwrap the chocolate bar and put into a freezer bag large enough to hold the whole bar. (Picture shows half a bar so the bag would fit in the pictures)

Do not decide to save the bag and go on to the next step with the chocolate in the silver wrapping. The silver wrapping will break apart and throw chocolate chunks all over and the size of the chunks will be very inconsistent due to no viability through the wrapping.

Step 5: Breaking the Bars

Start smacking the bars with the back of the spoon. The chocolate bar will start to break into smaller and smaller pieces.

Try to smack the bar in the middle of the area that needs breaking.

If the bar starts to dent or mush then refreeze.

I like my chunks smaller then chocolate chips so I break the pieces more then if some liked large chocolate chunks.

The smaller chunks melt better in recipes, like double boilers.