You can impart shine and smoothness to your chocolates with the process of tempering because these are not chocolate’s natural qualities. When making chocolate candy, make sure the chocolate doesn’t crumble or bloom; to prevent this, tempering is the only solution.
Chocolate loses temper when it is heated, that’s why re-tempering is necessary. Cocoa butter, which is the basic ingredient of chocolate, has substantial quantities of solids and these, along with the butter’s crystals, get suspended during melting. The crystals that get separated from the solids rise to the top and appear as gray film.
The unique quality of cocoa butter is that it can crystallize into six different forms. These six types of crystals rapidly dominate at certain temperatures. To carefully counter this, you should closely monitor the temperatures. Type V of these six types of crystals is the one that facilitates the crispness and shine of the chocolates.
Tempering is aimed at produced large volumes of type V crystals. Both type IV and V crystals are created when the chocolate is melted by heating. Tempering eliminates type IV and retains type V crystals when done at the precise temperature that encourages type V crystals in forming. Thus, it is important to maintain accurate temperatures; for this, you can use a digital laser thermometer. Note that for each chocolate variety, you have specific heating and cooling temperatures.
The methods adopted for tempering are tabliering and seeding by hand and the microwave method. As a chocolate maker, it is essential that you learn tempering by hand.
Tabliering is the process in which a huge chunk of chocolate is cut into small strips and melted in a double boiler. Pour half of the melted chocolate on a marble counter and work on it with a rubber spatula to achieve shine and smoothness. The remaining half is also worked into the whole lot to ensure a uniform temperature on the whole mass. Once it is shiny and smooth, you can begin dipping and molding.
The process of seeding involves the use of the already-tempered chocolate as the “seed” for “inoculating” the melted material so that type V crystals dominate the crystallization process. In seeding also, accuracy in temperatures is of primary importance because any lapse will result in repeat tempering.
Monitoring accurate temperatures and avoidance of over-mixing or under-mixing are the factors that contribute to the difficulty of tempering. Even experienced chocolate makers find humid weather conditions tricky. Owing to its marketing merits, however, the process of tabliering is still preferred by artisan chocolatiers.
If you choose to do microwave tempering, you should adhere to fixed parameters in such variables as oven wattage, the amount of cocoa butter in the raw chocolate, and the quantity of chocolate added to the bowl for melting purposes.
Tempering is a difficult and challenging task but you will forget all your difficulties when you see the glee on the faces of the recipients of your smooth and crisp chocolates.
