12.10.09
The Intricacies of Tempering Chocolates
Chocolate candy making isn’t an easy task, if done manually. The requirements for doing this are an accurate thermometer, a double boiler, a rubber spatula and candy molds in addition to the basic ingredient of dark, semi-sweet or milk chocolate bars. For chocolate truffles, you’ll need cream also.
Candy making commences with melting of the chocolate chunks in a double boiler and you should continuously stir the contents to prevent over-burning from happening. Fruit-filled chocolates can be got if you mix the fruits of your choice with the melted chocolate in a bowl. By pouring the molten chocolate into candy molds, you can make candies of different shapes. You can keep these chocolate candies in a chiller for a while and you are ready with your chocolate candies.
Manual candy making is a difficult task because you need to preserve accurate temperatures during tempering. But if you skip this process of tempering fearing this step, you are committing a big mistake because your chocolates will not be snappish and burnished. It’s perfectly alright if you skip this step in candies that are made for your own use but if your chocolate candies are meant for commercial ends, you should not skip the process of tempering that can only make them attractive with shine and snap.
When the chocolate’s melted, it loses its original temper and hence you’ll need re-tempering again. If you don’t do it, blooming will occur and the chocolates will look ugly and unattractive with the crystals of the cocoa butter show on the surface of chocolates.
Cocoa butter has many fatty acids and these fatty acids possess the unique characteristic of crystallizing into six types of crystals. These six types of crystals tend to dominate at six different temperatures. To deal with this, you need to maintain specific tempering temperatures that will facilitate production of large quantities of type V crystals that give the chocolates excellent shine and snap. Dark, semi-sweet and milk chocolates have specific temperatures at which more type V crystals are created. Another crystal, namely type IV, also form when type V are produced but since type IV crystals quickly and easily melt away, only type V crystals are capable of imparting that firmness, snap and shine into chocolates.
An accurate thermometer is an absolute necessity for manual tempering without which you can’t preserve precise tempering temperatures. You can’t compromise on even slight deviations in temperatures because these may also mess up the chocolates. But you can get rid of this hassle if you use a tempering machine in which the entire process is automated. Even production of type V crystals to the required level and maintaining of specific temperatures are also monitored by a computer chip on the tempering machine. You are also assured of consistently high-quality chocolates. If you use a tempering machine, you save a lot of time and energy and you can expend them usefully to devise ways to improve your business and products.
