Can melted chocolate covered coffee beans be put in the freezer to restore them

Question

I had ordered chocolate covered coffee beans by mail, but they arrived melted and soupy. Should I throw them away or try to save them? I am unable to return them.

Answer 1

The coating may or may not need tempering to look nice, (depends on what sort of coating chocolate was used) but food-safety-wise it doesn't matter, and that won't affect the taste much (more the texture.)

Merely refrigerating should reharden the coating, though presumably you'll end up with beans stuck together with coating.

Not really any good reason to throw them out. Refrigerate (or freeze if you like) probably hit with a hammer or rolling pin to break up the mass into manageable chunks, and rest assured that it would look much the same after one bite if it had arrived un-melted.

If the coating won't stay solid when taken out of the refrigerator it probably was one that was tempered. Re-tempering it seems impractical. Many coatings don't need tempering (they use cocoa powder with some fat other than cocoa butter to manage that trick.)