Oh NO! I just dumped melted chocolate on my kitchen floor!
Here's a quick, well, not really quick...but it's a pretty slick way to clean up any melted chocolate you might spill on the floor, with items you probably have in your own kitchen. It took about 30 minutes for the entire process of corralling the dogs in the other room, cooling the chocolate and scraping up the chocolate and wet cleaning the floor.
I spilled an entire 2 cup bowl of melted chocolate on the floor. Most of it spilled in one area, some of it on the cupboard and some on my pants. Plus, my toes even had a nice thick layer on the nails. Hmmm…a chocolate pedicure.
My first notion was to get the dogs blocked out of the kitchen, so I corralled them in the other room using one of my indoor portable doggie fences. These small door-width fences also come in handy whenever we have repair people in the house. It keeps the dogs out of trouble.
I was thinking, what to use to get the chocolate cleanly out of the rough surfaced kitchen floor tiles. I thought if I just wiped the chocolate off the floor with a rag, some chocolate would still be in the crevices in the flooring. Maybe I could cool it somehow.
Hmmm…how could I cool the chocolate so that it would pop off the floor in chunks? Ice cubes? No, too messy. A fan? That would take too long. Turn up the air conditioning? Not economical.
How about using my back ice pack which I keep in the freezer for whenever my bad back aches? That would cool the chocolate, but I surely wouldn’t want to create another problem by getting chocolate on the ice pack.
How about plastic wrap? Yes, how about plastic wrap. So, I unrolled a sheet of plastic wrap about the size of the chocolate mess. Actually, I had to unroll a couple sheets. They fit on top of the melted chocolate. Perfect.
Then I laid the ice pack on top of the plastic wrap and let it sit for about 30 minutes since the chocolate was fairly thick.
Before I walked away, I set up another doggie fence in that corner of the kitchen counter so the pups could not get in there to slurp up the luscious chocolate…which is not good at all for dogs.
While the chocolate was cooling, I got to looking through my kitchen cupboards for something that I could use to scrap the chocolate off the floor. I found two of my counter scrapers. I’m so glad I have two of them – one plastic and one sharp metal.
After the chocolate firmed up, I tested the metal counter scraper and that popped up the chocolate pretty easily, but I wanted to make sure I didn’t scrape the tile, so I used it just a little. I primarily used the plastic one to pop up the thinner pieces and the metal one for the thicker chunks. Then pressing them together on their long edges it was pretty easy to pick up all the big and little chunks.
After I thought I had it all picked up, I noticed the tile still looked rather “chocolatey” in some places. After hot wetting a couple paper towels, and rubbing the tiles in those spots, I
brought up even more chocolate which had sunk into the grout and the many little indentations in the tiles. (I’m so glad I had only dumped a couple of cups of chocolate or I might still be on my hands and knees on the floor digging chocolate out of those little indentations.)
After cleaning up the floor, I discovered some on the side of the cupboard near the floor. A warm wet paper towel did the trick to get all that off the cupboards. Then a little floor cleaning fluid to make sure I got everything.
Then, just when I thought I had gotten all the chocolate cleaned up, I noticed one of my dogs laying over there, with his mouth under the cupboard licking the kickplate. The little stinker had found some chocolate I missed. What a nose on that great little detective! With chocolate brown cupboards, it was hard for me to see that last little bit. So, another warm wet paper towel did the trick…and I was able to finish the treats I was making.
By the way, the Halloween Chocolate Chip Cookie Bark came out very tasty...dark chocolate, white chocolate, homemade chocolate chip cookies, chocolate pretzels, cinnamon pretzels, Pumpkin spice malted milk balls, pecans and M&Ms. Yum!
It’s a good think I had more dark melting chocolate in the cupboard, and I was able to finish my recipe.
Happy Halloween and happy baking to you. Whatever you make for your little ghosts and goblins this season, “Bake your own Memories!”
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