A Metal Spatula and a Microwave

Once upon a time there was a girl who worked for a catering company . . . yes, this girl was me

I worked in the Pastry Room and I would plate up lots of different desserts so that they looked delicious.  One of the desserts we made were called Cheesecake Lollypops, these lollypops of goodness consisted of crustless cheesecake that was siphoned into a chocolate shell and then dipped in dark chocolate.  They were very good.

I’d made these lollypops many times before an unfortunate occurrence happened.  One day I was going about my normal routine, which consisted of sticking lollypop sticks into the cheesecake balls and sticking them into the freezer to harden (otherwise the cheesecake would fall off of the sticks and become a gushy gooey mess in the chocolate when you tried to dip them.)  While the cheesecake froze the next step was to melt the chocolate.

Some high up professional cooks like to get very fancy and complicated and melt their chocolate over the stove, carefully placed in a bowl on top of another pot and melt their chocolate at low temperatures.  We microwaved ours.  Although I do not suggest this for all you aspiring cooks out there, the catering company bought very high quality chocolate so that we could use this rather unusual method of melting it.

So off I went to melt my chocolate.  I’d put my chocolate pearls in a plastic tub and then stick it in the microwave for one minute, pull it out, stir it up (with a metal spatula, which was perhaps the beginning of the problem), and then melt it for another minute or so.  Then I went back to the Pastry Kitchen and started dipping cheesecake pops.

As time passes melted chocolate will harden back into its normal consistency, so every few minutes I would have to stir it with my spatula again.  There was dark chocolate for dipping and then white chocolate for drizzling the lollypops.  On one occasion after I had gotten done drizzling about fifty lollypops I couldn’t find my metal spatula for the dark chocolate – which was rather frustrating.  However, I didn’t think much more about it because my shift was ending and I got busy putting lollypops away and taking the other non-absent dirty dishes to the dish room.  Then I wrapped up my chocolate, put it on its shelf and went home.

The next day I had to finish my lollypops.  I got out my tubs of chocolate, which had hardened into thick cubes and took them to the microwave, new metal spatulas in hand to stir the chocolate with.  In went the dark chocolate.  One minute later I could smell something burning.  I examined the microwave – these were very old, rather glitchy microwaves, it was not an uncommon occurrence to find a note on one of them that said the microwave had broken down and not to use it.  I stirred up what I could of the clumpy chocolate, gave the microwave another concerned glance, and stuck the chocolate in again. 

As you can imagine, the burning I smelled was not from any microwave glitch, it was from a me glitch.  The next time I pulled out my chocolate and stirred it up, what did I find?  Yes, there, hardened to the bottom of my container, was the metal spatula I had lost the day before. 

I’m not sure why the microwave did not blow up; heaven knows that two minutes of microwaving a metal spatula should have been enough to have some kind of catastrophe.  Perhaps chocolate insulates metal and that is why I am alive now and I am not famous for blowing up a microwave.  Although the story still gets worse.

The metal screws that kept the spatula attached to its wooden handle had gotten so hot that it had begun to burn through the wood.  I had small charred pieces of sharp wood floating around in fifteen pounds of dark chocolate.  I tasted the chocolate – yup, hickory flavored (and textured) chocolate.  I’d ruined the entire tub.

What did I do?  At first I tried to pretend that the chocolate wasn’t ruined and put it on a few cheesecake balls.  Then I tried one . .  . um, no, there was no possible way I could serve one of those to anyone.  Hickory flavored chocolate is strange enough, but the small pieces of burnt wood really weren’t working for me.  So then I poured out all that beautiful, burnt, disgusting tasting chocolate out in to a garbage can and proceeded to melt a different tub of chocolate that was metal free.

I don’t think I ever told my boss that I’d melted fifteen pounds of chocolate, burned a metal spatula in it, and then thrown it away afterword.  Perhaps the greatest marvel of the entire ordeal is that the microwave continued working for a good year afterword.