There are a ton of best practices for melting chocolate, accidentally leaving a bar in a hot car notwithstanding. Incorporating a little bit of butter can make melted chocolate smooth and rich. Keeping water at bay will ensure better melted chocolate, too. Then there’s the Julia Child approach, which melts chocolate into dark rum. Yum.
This method introduces an extra dimension of flavor, which Child, in a throwback video posted to her foundation’s Facebook account, says could just as easily be coffee, orange juice, or a citrus liqueur. In this instance, 6 ounces of semi-sweet baking chocolate goes into a sugar pan filled with ¼ cup of room temperature rum. A sugar pan is typically dedicated to confections, but your everyday saucepan should work fine this time. The sugar (or sauce) pan then goes into recently simmering water that has been removed to a separate, appropriately-sized vessel; covered, and left to sweat down. This mimics a DIY double boiler, minus the constant heat.
Just how boozy rummy chocolate remains, and a couple of Child’s own uses
Expect this melted chocolate compound alone to remain as strong as about four shots. Water begins to simmer at about 180 degrees Fahrenheit. It will also, of course, begin losing that temperature the second it’s removed from the flame, as this melting method instructs. Alcohol begins to “cook away,” or lose its intoxicating potency, at 173 degrees Fahrenheit. So there is a close to zero chance you’ll lose any ABV along the way.
Child’s boozy chocolate melting factors into her chocolate mousse recipe, which, of course does not use any considerable heat, so it, too, will be a rather spirited dessert. It’s also part of her gateau reine de Saba, which was actually one of Julia Child’s favorite foods. The rum present in this cake only measures 2 tablespoons, and it’s ultimately baked for 25 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. More than half of the alcohol will evaporate under those metrics. So, the small amount of booze to begin with, paired with the reasonable assumption of just how much will disappear in the oven makes it almost impossible that it will get anybody tipsy. But if the threat of any alcohol is a concern, those alternative liquids will be a better bet.
