Mrs. Anderson’s Baking Chocolate Ice Chipper, 9-Inches

Let me start with a brief explanation of my situation with this chipper: I am a home chef/confectioner that makes candy and chocolates on a fairly regular basis, and I needed something better than either store-bought chocolate chips (no cocoa butter to speak of) or $15/6 oz locally bought quality bars (only one place near me carries anything like Valrhona, Callebaut, etc and they are pricey). So I purchased a bulk bar online.This thing is the only feasible way I've thought up for dealing with the mass of bulk chocolate I purchased. It does take significantly more work to make fine chunks, but it is doable. Moreover, I don't think there is any way I could have dealt with the 12lb bar I had.Here's my current 'chunking' flow.-Place bar in a large rubbermaid container on a solid surface. You generate a lot of 'dust' when you do this, and it's a shame to waste good chocolate. Also it's a real pain to clean up otherwise.-Take a hammer, place chipper near the edge, start knocking off big chunks. I usually end up with fragments that span the whole length of the chunk (~4-6 inches) by 1-2", by .5-1".-Break these up into roughly 1"x.5"x.5" chunks. That's about as small as I can get with this thing (which for a few minutes of labor and a starting piece 2"x6"x12" isn't bad!)-Pour the resulting chunks and dust into a HEAVY duty ziplock. double bag it.-Place something thick and soft (piece of leather, silicon potholder, etc) over the bag, and smash it a bit.Now, I wouldn't really recommend this to make chunks for cookies, etc. The resultant bits are so variable that it'd be hard to get anything like consistency. If you want that buy grocery store bars and hammer them because that isn't what this thing is for. This is for taking large, heavy bars of bulk chocolate and breaking it down into manageable pieces you can melt easily. And not only does it do that very well, but I can't imagine doing it without this (or something nearly identical).

I love to bake and make candy with bulk chocolate, but the one aspect of the process that I dread is cutting up the large chunks of chocolate. It is difficult to chop through the hard chocolate with a chefs knife. I find the job unpredictable and somewhat dangerous. This sturdy tool has resolved the issue.I am a home cook, not a professional and I rarely have chunks of chocolate that weigh more than a couple of pounds. This tool permits chipping of the chocolate for melting in a manageable manner. I consider this method far safer than using the chef's knife. The chocolate flies around less, and to help capture the bits that leave the cutting board, I put a large piece of wax paper, or parchment paper under the cutting board.The tool does not produce perfectly consistently sized pieces, like those bags of pre-made chocolate chunks for cookies, but for breaking down bulk chocolate to prepare for melting, this tool does its job.

I do not understand the 1 star reviews. I use this tool every month to break 5 kilo blocks of Callebaut chocolate into half kilo blocks for sale in a food coop. Anyone who says it doesn't work does not know how to use it. You have to place the tines flat on the chocolate then press straight down until the tines pierce the chocolate then push down hard with steady pressure while rocking the fork front to back (not side to side). Eventually the chocolate will simply break.Anyone who gave this tool 1 star because "it doesn't work" is clearly doing something wrong.

This item, while it seems like it will get the job done, is worthless. I purchased this because the chef at the restaurant where I work insists on buying chocolate in those huge 11 lb. blocks. I thought this would be a good way to break apart the block and use what I needed. WRONG! It is much easier just using my 10-inch chef's knife. I guess the only good thing is that I bought it here on Amazon rather than wasting alot more money on this thing at Sur La Table. If I could have, I would've given it 0 stars!

This is a very large tool and the tines are quick thick and fairly blunt. It's okay and does the job.

Just a quick FYI, when I un-boxed the chipper there were one or two spots on the wooden handle that were not smooth. Being a handy guy with some sand paper this wasn't a problem.I was looking for something to split large toilet paper sized solid chunks of ice. I used a similar product like this at my old job where with one whack of a hammer at the wooden end would split a cinder block sized piece of ice neatly in half. In my case, however, this chipper did not neatly separate my chunk of ice.MORE IMPORTANTLY, when I started using the chipper more like a pick, the chrome paint or whatever was used to cover the chipper started to flake off, luckily the ice was not being used for consumption. This still gets a 3 stars because I feel relatively certain that as a baking tool it would work fine and that chocolate is not as hard, brittle, and jagged as ice is.

I buy the big blocks (5 kg) of Callebaut dark chocolate for baking. Until buying this great little tool, I used a 10" chef's knife to divide the block and chop the chocolate as necessary. For the unskilled or inexperienced, this can be dangerous and a little scary, and while it gets the job done, it feels clumsy and is none too great for the knife, either. Combined with a rubber mallet or a plastic-faced hammer, this is the right tool for this particular job. Great price for it, too.NOTE: When using on the thick blocks, the mallet is not optional; the chipper doesn't work without it.