In the list of food disasters I’ve had in my life, the Great Chocolate Seizing Incident of ’01 is at the top of it. Soup to nuts for around 100 people was what I cooked for our fraternity house’s party at the time. I was still a part-time cook and in college at the time. This wasn’t new. What was new was that I was going to make chocolate candies to serve with coffee after the meal. Is this what you do? Melt chocolate, pour it into moulds, add some flavourings, and let it set? “That’s child’s play.” (stand mixer)
People were having a good time during the melting phase. As long as the moulds were clean, I had no trouble getting liquid chocolate to pour into them. These candies, on the other hand, didn’t want to set. It didn’t take them long to get soft and melty. I thought I’d try again, so I melted that chocolate again, this time while I was working on other things. During the process of stirring, the chocolate began to form grainy lumps. Crap. What should I do? I thought that. I know that! I think the chocolate lost too much water as it warmed up. I’ll add a little hot water to it. I’ll do that. That’s it!
I started stirring very hard as I added a small stream of steaming hot water. Almost right away, the chocolate turned into a grainy, dull mess.
When coffee service came around, everyone was so drunk that no one missed the chocolate.
First of all, this was my first and most humbling foray into the world of chocolate-making. Since then, I’ve learned how hard chocolate can be to work with and how important it is to temper it properly. If you want to dip, decorate, or make chocolate candies, this is a skill you need to learn. If you’re just making a chocolate cake or ganache, you don’t need to know this.
To temper chocolate, you can use a lot of different tools, but I’m going to talk about the ones that are best for home cooks. The first is the stovetop or microwave method that most people use. The second method I learned from Alton Brown is how to use a food processor and a hair dryer to make a cake. The third and best way to cook food is to use a sous-vide cooker, which is what I use. Any of the techniques below can be used right away. You can read on for more information about how and why each one works.
To temper chocolate the right way, there’s no other way. Need a good thermometer like the Thermapen or Thermopop to do this job well.
Once you have that thermometer, there isn’t much more to do after that.
For this reason, chocolate must be tempered.
The temperature at which most cooking oils and fluids become liquid and solid is a “magic point.” This is the point at which they become liquid and become solid. Right? Chocolate, on the other hand, has its own rules. Sure, it has a melting point, but how long it’s been held at a certain temperature or how hard it’s been shaken can make it look and feel very different when it’s solidified.
When chocolate is well-tempered, it should set up with a smooth, slightly glossy finish and a hard snap.
Why does this happen? It’s because cocoa fat, the main ingredient in chocolate that makes it solid, can form a wide range of crystals, from loose and unstable to well-structured and firm. People who make chocolate have to temper it, which is the process of heating the chocolate to a series of very specific temperatures and working it so that it has the best chance of forming a strong, stable structure. In a good temper, the chocolate should set up with a smooth, slightly glossy finish and a hard snap. if the chocolate isn’t properly tempered, it may look mottled, pale, or have spots. It may also be soft and sometimes grainy.
More.. (stand mixer)
Pure chocolate terms: When you heat chocolate above 115°F, it melts all the way. Too quickly, you’ll make crystals that aren’t stable, which will make chocolate that doesn’t harden properly and looks dull. If, on the other hand, you keep it at 88 to 92°F long enough for most of the cocoa fat molecules to line up properly, you should be able to dip your strawberries, biscotti, or whatever else you like to dip in chocolate into it.
Chocolate crystals come in six different shapes (Forms I through VI), and each type of crystal melts and forms at a certain temperature. Form V, also known as Beta Prime, is the form we want. It forms in that sweet spot around 90°F, and that’s where we want to find it. You could theoretically get your chocolate to form perfect Form V crystals by heating it to 115°F until it was fully melted, then lowering the temperature and holding it at 90°F. In reality though, the crystals take a long time to form, which is why most techniques for tempering chocolate have you first lower the temperature of the chocolate to around 81°F (27°C), which promotes rapid formation of both Form V and Form IV crystals, then raise it back up to 90°F, which causes the crystals to harden.
Is all this talk about molecules and crystals putting you to sleep, or is it making you think? It does that to me, too. Most of this is information you don’t need to know to make your chocolate temper the right way. There are lots of graphs and charts in Peter Greweling’s book on chocolate and confectionery. If you like nerdy talk, you should buy a copy of this book right away.
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