(Experiment 184) Tempering chocolate

Handling chocolate is an art, but with a little practice, basic things like tempering chocolate can be easily done, and you can achieve some nice results. Below, you can see my first batch of chocolates — far from perfect. I’ve improved my technique over time, but I figured it would be nice to show that even without experience, you can get some nice-looking chocolates.

Tempering chocolate is when you melt the chocolate, but by using the proper technique, you help the cocoa butter crystals reform in a stable structure. The difference from just melting chocolate is that once it sets, melted (untempered) chocolate will melt back in your hand super fast, and it also won’t have that nice sheen — the glossy finish you want.

Note that white, milk, and dark chocolate temper at different temperatures. Also, each brand may have a different value. If you buy any professional chocolate brand like Callebaut, Barry, or Valrhona, they’ll usually show a temperature graph for their product (example below).

Before you proceed, make sure you have a candy thermometer. While searching for one on Amazon, I stumbled on a combo spatula/thermometer. To my surprise, it actually works but its not super precise and its a pain to clean. If you want more precision and have the budget, I highly recommend buying a Thermapen or Chefalarm — much, much more precise, and it can be used for other purposes too. The chefalarm you can clip so it becomes handless and you can program to alert you at certain temperature.

Extra info: when tempering chocolate, it goes through six stages. Below is a very condensed summary for chocolate.

If you use the chocolate without following all the phases, you’ll end up with issues: bloom (either sugar or fat), no gloss or snap, and so on.

Print Recipe

(Experiment 184) Tempering chocolate

Ingredients

• 200 g or more chocolate it needs to contain cocoa butter.

Instructions

Temperatures listed below are for Callebaut 811 chocolate. If you use something else please refer to the chart on your bag.
• Set up a bain-marie (double boiler) over simmering water, and put in two-thirds of the chocolate. Temperature is critical — let it reach 115°F. Stir, stir, stir, and keep watching the temperature. This is a slow process, and if you overheat the chocolate, you're done.
• Once at 115°F, remove from heat and add the remaining chocolate little by little while stirring, making sure it's melted before adding more. Adding unmelted chocolate drops the melted chocolate's temperature. Keep doing this until you reach 95°F.
  
You dont want to add to many chocolate when you get closer to 95F else you will end up with unmelted chocolate.
• Let it cool to 80–81°F, stirring occasionally.
If you are doing this recipe during summer months and your kitchen is hot, you can use the following tip. Put cold water in a bowl and put your chcolate bowl in the cold water for 2 seconds at most. Then keep on stirring. Dont over do it else it will cause the chocolate to cool too fast,but you can do it 2 or 3 times if it doesnt drop. It is imperative you do no get any water in your chocolate.
• Now it’s time to test the chocolate. Put a little bit on a piece of parchment paper and wait 2–3 minutes. If it comes off the paper cleanly and “snaps” when you break it, you have tempered chocolate, my friend. If not, reheat to 95°F and restart the process of adding chocolate to cool it down.
• If you succeeded, put the chocolate back on the bain-marie and heat it back to 88–90°F. Take it out and use it right away

Notes

At minimum, you want to use 200g of chocolate, or it will be very hard to monitor the temperature. I used Callebaut No. 811, and needless to say, the results were amazing. It’s one of the best chocolates you can get your hands on.

Do note that you may fail a few times trying to temper chocolate. Sometime it takes me a few try to make it correctly. Its an art !