<human>: I wanted to share this experience somewhere, because conventional wisdom and every search I've done says that if you get water into melted chocolate in the course of candy making, you are thoroughly screwed. "Don't throw it away, but it can't be tempered anymore" is the general advice.

I had a pound of milk chocolate that I had gotten in temper, and was holding it at temperature in a bowl that was partly immersed in a water bath. I've done this before, but this time the bowl capsized, and about a cup of water poured right on top of the chocolate. This totally sucked.

I immediately dumped the water out of the bowl. Then, not knowing what else to do, I dabbed the surface of the chocolate with a few clean paper towels. This made a mess, and some chocolate stuck to the paper towels. But the rest of the water got absorbed. At that point I was out of chocolate, and hope, so I went to bed.

Next day I bought more chocolate, but thought I'd give the chocolate in the bowl a try. Loosened it up in the microwave, then chopped it up and tempered it, seeding with some of the new chocolate. To my surprise it totally worked.

Could have been the fact it was milk chocolate w/lecithin, the fact that I didn't stir, or both. But since I'd never read about recovering from water contamination in melted chocolate... figured it might help someone else.

Could you distill the essence of the text into 1-3 sentences?
<bot>: If you get water in your chocolate, don't stir it it. You may be able to recover it by wicking it out w/paper towels. At least it's worth a shot.