Tempering Chocolate |

Tempering Chocolate

I taught a workshop this past week on Chocolate and we talked about varieties, taste tested them and then baked a chocolate cake and made some mousse. It was a great night but, what I didn’t teach was tempering.

There are a few reasons for that; I decided to focus on tasting and baking because that seems to be where most people’s interests lie. If you love chocolate, you want fast, flexible ways to enjoy it and you also want to be educated on what types to buy and feel good about eating.

Tempering is generally used to manipulate or create with chocolate. Couverture is the best type of chocolate to use for this because it has a higher cocoa fat content. For the average home chef, using cheater ways to decorate with it are a much better alternative. But, there were some who wanted to learn about tempering. This blog is for you guys:

Recipe: Tempering Chocolate 101

Ingredients

2 cups of couverture chocolate, available at chocolatiers and some grocery stores

Instructions

Chop the chocolate into small, equal sized pieces and melt it in a pan over a double boiler, stirring until very smooth and a digital thermometer reads 115 degrees F. Immediately remove the pan of chocolate from the double boiler and place it into a bowl of cool water and continuously stir the chocolate until a digital thermometer reads 80 degrees F. Then, immediately add the pan of chocolate back to the double boiler and heat it to 90 degrees F. Maintain the temperature of the chocolate as close to 90 degrees F as you can and continue to work with it; I recommmend a hot water bottle or heating pad to set it on as you work. If the chocolate temperature dips to below 85 degrees F, it must be retempered again in order to use it.

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