Understanding Chocolate Tempering Basics
If you don’t do the tempering of your chocolates, whitish-gray blotches or crystals appear on their surfaces and they may as well be rough and lackluster. You may also find the chocolates coarse to the tongue.
Tempering is an important step and most chocolate makers will not skip this because chocolates are not naturally shiny or smooth. Though conching is done to make the particles smooth, tempering of chocolates prevents the formation of large crystals. These crumbly crystals will rob the curious pleasure associated with chocolates.
Cocoa butter is the main ingredient for making chocolates, extracted from cocoa liquor which is in turn derived from grinding roasted cocoa beans. Cocoa beans are found to contain more than 53% of cocoa butter, which gives the rich and creamy texture to chocolates. In untempered chocolates, the cocoa butter breaks up into white spots that float to the surface of the chocolates. This unsightly thing is called blooming.
Tempering is difficult because cocoa butter contains many fatty acids and each one of them has its own melting and solidifying temperatures. During the melting of chocolates, these fat crystals get separated in the cocoa butter. Tempering stabilizes these fat crystals and holds them tightly together by which blooming, dull appearance and crumbly textures are avoided.
Tempering of chocolates can be done via three methods:
The first way is the hard way or the chocolate artisan’s way and popularly called tabliering. It’s done by melting the chocolate to be free of lumps, heating it to a temperature of 90F with one third of it worked on a marble slab. The remaining chocolate is later added to the worked one and by stirring, the whole mass is made to reach a specific temperature.
Another method to do tempering of chocolate is the easier “seeding” process in which already-tempered chocolate is added to the chocolate so as to trigger the crystallization of the free-moving crystals. The initial step is similar to tabliering in which two-thirds of the chocolates are melted and the remaining one-third is cut into small strips to be used as seeds.
The seed chocolate is stirred and mixed into the melted chocolate until the entire chocolate gets to its specific tempering temperature. You should closely monitor and maintain desired temperature ranges while making chocolate candies to keep them tempered.
If you don’t want to subject yourself to all these hassles, the best method is to buy a chocolate tempering machine. This helps chocolate makers to focus on the craft of chocolate making instead of on the efforts of tempering. Temperature maintenance is taken cared of by a computer chip leaving you free to concentrate on the fabulous experience of chocolate making.
