I often find myself having to melt chocolate for a cookie recipe or topping, and I manage to botch it about half the time. Chocolate is a tricky ingredient - because it contains a high amount of milk solids, the cook who heats chocolate will face the same challenges as the cook who heats milk. Chocolate can easily be scorched or turn gritty.

The first key to successfully melting chocolate is to chop it up into tiny pieces, about the size of a chocolate chip. If you are working with a brick of chocolate, you can do this with a sharp butcher's knife on a cutting board.

The second key is, in a word: stirring. By stirring the chocolate constantly, you get a more even heat throughout the entire batch. Stirring the chocolate helps prevent one bit from being kept on the heating surface for too long, and lets it cool off by mixing with an unmelted bit.

If you are melting chocolate in the microwave, remove it every 30 seconds or so to give it a good stirring. If you melt chocolate on the stove top, be sure to use a low heat or a double boiler, and stir it constantly.

Tempering chocolate is the professional way to go, but it's far more time and space intensive than either microwave or stovetop melting. When you temper chocolate, you heat it just a little bit, then turn it out on a clean work surface and give it a good kneading. Since you will also need a good digital thermometer (not a candy thermometer) this is probably not the most practical method, but it does give excellent results. Step by step instructions on tempering chocolate can be found here.