Go to the Recipe: Tempering Chocolate: How to Get Smooth, Silky Confections With Sous Vide
Great article! Thank you, ChefSteps!
Any thoughts/advice on adding some extra cocoa butter as described e.g. here? http://www.chefeddy.com/2010/03/temper-or-pre-crystallize-chocolate-using-cocoa-butter/
Could this be done starting with cocoa butter, cocoa powder, and sugar?
did you try just tempering cocoa butter and then adding that to out-of-temper chocolate and let the crystals grow.....
isn't that how chocolate in factories is tempered and maintained?
I have tried this a few times, and I always found it to be a little hit and miss. Sometimes I get a smooth chocolate to work with and other times a globby mess. But I was not aware that there is such a difference in milk, dark, and white. I think this has been my downfall. They got the shine, but melted in your hands. Is there any difference working with a 72% dark to working with 66% or 100% dark chocolates? I just got some new molds that I wanted to make for Valentines day and I have some killer flavors in mind. I feel like I am Valrhona's biggest private person buyer. Think I got 10 different types of feves from them. I did read up on how to make those fancy colors using food coloring that is oil based and cocoa butter. Wish me luck, I will post my results if they last long enough to get their picture taken.
I am going to make chocolate truffles. I am trying to figure out how to coat the ganache rounds with the tempered chocolate since it will be in a bag. Has anyone tried this?
Great to see this. Will there be a similar recipe if we're working from scratch, i.e., cocoa butter, cocoa powder, sweetener, flavours, etc?
You can freeze the ganache and place some toothpicks in them. And then once you got your tempered chocolate ready dip the frozen truffles. Let the chocolate set, if you have a little stand you can place the chocolates so you don't get a flat bottom. You can also roll in cocoa powder.
Transfer to a bowl and dip the ganache balls in them fish with a fork. But don't freeze!!!
It seems from your temperature curves that there is quite a difference in temperature whether using milk chocolate or dark chocolate. What was the percentage of the dark chocolate in your example and in which range can it be used?
Great tips ChefSteps! Made some awesome chocolate covered strawberries.
I am planning to make aerated chocolate (a vacuum foam). Do you have any tips on doing this? I was thinking of starting with this method, putting my iSi canister in the water (lid on) to warm up at the same time, then after seeding pour it into the canister, close the lid, bring it up to the stage 3 temps, hit it with 3 NO2 canisters, and let it sit for a few minutes. Then spray it a flat high wall container, put it in the vacuum chamber, suck out the air to 26" Hg, and set it to cycle/hold at that for two hours (a "marinate cycle") and let it cool down/set in that time.
Any thoughts on guaranteeing success while doing this?
Where do you get those beautiful chocolate molds?
iSi has a recipe on their website. I used it in my chocolate entremet, it works great. If you can't find it, you can check out my blog for how I did it. https://moedernkitchen.com/2016/11/23/secret-stash-of-chocolate/
@Grant Lee Crilly I found that the working temp is not very easy to work with, I am doing something wrong. The temp says 32c for dark chocolate, I cool it to cystal and then heat it up, this cycle is not explained much in time, but I have tried to do a short 10 minute and a longer 30 min. Both resulted in the same. I do follow other people making chocolate profesional, and they have a much more runny texture. What could be the issue here. Once it set I had a perfect temper, just very hard to work with. Below is my first attempt using colors, I learned my lesson so that will look lots better in the weekend batch or the one I am trying to night.
I managed to get a good temper and color going. Here are my Bonbons with Habanero Strawberry Jam and Peanut Butter
Pavoni Italia makes some amazing molds. I have a hard time finding them in the US. I found some on amazon.com from fat daddy.
I highly recommend this technique, especially for desserts lovers. It gives one so many options in regards to decorating! To answer one of the questions - yes, they can be served separately as chocolate candies, but I prefer to use them as cake decorations.
I'm confused. If all commercially available chocolate is pre-tempered, why do you want to temper it again? I'm assuming the Valrhona feves are pre-tempered because you're using them to seed the melted chocolate. What am I missing?
Read the section titled "Let’s Talk About Crystals"
If you want thin, pourable chocolate for molds or for dipping, you will need to re-temper it. Otherwise, you can simply melt the pre-tempered stuff which will result in thicker melted chocolate.
Good tips while I wait for my Joule to arrive.
I had the same issue with the working temp. Ever get an answer?
Is it possible to add a little coconut oil for flavoring after tempering, Beforet settingin molds. Or will it be too soft?
This was a very good article. Although Valhrona chocolate was used with their tempering information, it is very easy to get the same information specific to other companies' chocolates. I have used several different types of chocolate over the years and found that you can get the proper temperatures for tempering from each of the companies. So it is worth looking at their web sites to get the right temperatures for the chocolate you are using -- and if they aren't published on their web site, sending them an e-mail should get a response with the information. No need to guess.
I would love if my Joule had a "temper mode". Put chocolate in a jar to temper, it raises it to the necessary temperature, holds it for a time, then turns off the heat and keeps the water circulating to the next temperature, keeps it for a time, and so forth.
Hi, Jay.. man that would be amazing if it could work like that, unfortunately the movement of the chocolate is pretty important to develop the proper crystals.
There is no such thing as white chocolate. I use to make chocolate for a living.
It's all relatively real. From the perspective of white chocolate it seems real.
It's definitely real. It is defined in EU and US federal regulations and was first marketed by Nestlé in Switzerland:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milkybar
Would a Control Freak Home be a better way to temper chocolate?
