Mystic Toad Press Blog

Great-looking chocolate is sheer ecstasy, though such chocolate candy can only be made so by tempering, a three-stage process of melting, cooling down and heating up chocolates at optimized temperatures to impart luster, smoothness, firmness and creaminess to chocolates.

Tempering improves the shelf life of chocolates as well. It keeps away blooming, which makes chocolates unfortunately dull, gritty, and crumbly. Selling such unsightly chocolates would be a tall order.

Cocoa butter has fatty acids that can crystallize into six crystalline structures, each dominating tempering at six diverse temperatures. This phenomenon prevents the multiplication of type V crystals that are the only ones capable of making chocolates lustrous, smooth, firm and creamy. To prevent the uncontrollable proliferation of unwanted crystals and instead make crystallization produce only the type V crystals, tempering is carefully directed and chocolate temperatures equally carefully managed.

Manual tempering is an intricate activity, even daunting for some experienced chocolatiers. Newbies therefore will do well to fully understand the process before they embark on it; despite the availability of tempering machines that automate the process, tempering by hand will still be an asset at crunch time.

Being highly sensitive to temperatures, chocolates will not be tempered successfully if temperatures are in flux. Temperatures need to be kept specific and accurate during tempering otherwise you’ll have to do over tempering till you achieve successful results. A temper meter or a regularly-calibrated thermometer will facilitate this part of your tempering tasks.

Melting chocolates at the start of tempering would have to be done on low or medium heat so as not to ruin the chocolate through burning. The first method of manual tempering, where melted chocolate is worked on on a marble slab towards tempering temperature, is called tabliering. In the second method, where you use non-melted (and therefore, tempered) chocolate bits as “seeds” to temper your melted chocolate successfully, is called seeding.

Manual tempering has other problems like wet equipment, a humid climate, faulty thermometers or temper meters and the like can ruin all your careful tempering efforts and force you to do re-tempering. If you’re thinking of tempering large quantities of chocolates often, either for gifting or commercial purposes, you need to use tempering machines for efficiency’s sake.

You not only produce enough quantity of type V crystals every time you temper, but you’re also relieved of the tedium of keeping temperatures precise because the tempering machine has a computer chip to do this work for you. You also get to enjoy a longer-tempered chocolate so you can extend your dipping and molding time in order to craft those intricate designs that you’ve planned.