Chocolatiers are usually careful when tempering their chocolates; this is because since chocolates are not naturally creamy and shiny, it has to go through several processes in order to satisfy the buyer’s tastes. Before it can even be tempered, a process called conching precedes it, a procedure where the chocolate liquor goes through a number of rollers in order to refine the particles. Chocolate tempering follows to eliminate the still-detectable crystals and refine chocolate grains.
Real chocolates must be made out of cocoa butter; it is the one that gives chocolates its delicious, tempting features. Cocoa butter is about 55% to 60% of the chocolate paste which you can get from the roasted and grounded cocoa beans. If the chocolate is not tempered the cocoa butter crystals fall apart resulting in blooming.
Cocoa butter is composed of a number of fatty acids that possess different melting and solidifying temperatures, the very reason why tempering is so complicated. Chocolates when melted can disintegrate the crystalline forms, paving the way for other crystal forms to appear. The very goal of tempering your chocolate is to manage the crystallization stage so that only the crystals that will yield to chocolate’s tempting qualities will proliferate.
You can temper your chocolate in many ways. The first one which is quite difficult is usually favored by artisans, and is made by tempering by hand which, if you think about it, can be such a tedious task. Chocolate is melted, then divided into two parts with one part cooled down first through scraping and folding, then the other part blended in, until both parts achieve a cooled temperature of 80F.
The easier method of manual tempering is through a technique called seeding where seeding is done by melting 2/3 of the chocolate ingredient and mixing it to 1/3 un-melted part of the chocolate. The principle behind it is similar to the artisan’s method: cooling by working the chocolate until it achieves a thickened consistency. In seeding though, the crystals in the un-melted chocolate will serve as the model structures which the forming crystals can bond to during crystallization.
Remember that in both tempering methods, keeping tempering temperatures correct will spell the difference between tempering success and failure.
The easiest method of chocolate tempering is through the use of a chocolate tempering machine. Because chocolate tempering is a difficult task, chocolate tempering machines were created to monitor, maintain, and manage temperatures for you while you concentrate on making chocolate candies. This machine is already programmed through a microprocessor to undertake the three stages of tempering so there will be no need to constantly stir or check on your chocolates every now and then.
Professional chocolatiers and chocolate enthusiasts are getting hold of these machines since this is a big help for them, they can get their full attention on crafting their candies instead of constantly guarding chocolate tempers.