Making Chocolates + Tempering

Decorating By HammIamm Updated 1 Feb 2007 , 4:50am by smbanda

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HammIamm Posted 30 Jan 2007 , 2:16am
post #1 of 14

I don't know about everyone else, but when I make chocolates, by the time I am done, my kitchen and Me are absolutely covered in chocolate! there has to be a better way to do this.
I find when I am tempering I am stand at least 15-20mins in front of the stove stirring and watchign tempatures. I have all my tempatures from the choco. manufacture, is there an easier/ better way to do this??!!!

please offer me any tips, advice, reccomend any special tools that'll help!!!!
please i really need to nail this one!!! haha

thanks

13 replies
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mcdonald Posted 30 Jan 2007 , 2:20am
post #2 of 14

baking911.com has a lot of information on chocolate.

here's the link in case you don't have it

http://www.baking911.com/chocolate/101_intro.htm

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Jessmar Posted 30 Jan 2007 , 2:39am
post #3 of 14

Oh I know exactly what you mean! I made a box out of chocolate and, even though the chocolate box itself looks simple, it took forever and made a mess! I spent a lot of time tempering my chocolate, like you said, 15-20 mins in front of the stove. I wish I had some tips or advice for you, but I guess we'll have to wait and see if someone else can help us... Well, best of luck! -Jess

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Jessmar Posted 30 Jan 2007 , 2:41am
post #4 of 14

Thanks mcdonald - I just saw your post. I'll have to check it out!

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BlakesCakes Posted 30 Jan 2007 , 2:45am
post #5 of 14

I like to temper using the microwave. I do it at 50% power for short periods--1 to 2 mins.--and stir. I take the temp. periodically and in general, when it gets to 100F, I start seeding with chocolate pieces to take it back to the proper temperature to be in temper. I find this to be much less messy and time consuming.

HTH
Rae

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smbanda Posted 30 Jan 2007 , 7:08pm
post #6 of 14

I hate tempering chocolate!!! It got to the point that we were wasting so much chocolate that we were losing money on the stuff we were selling. When I booked my first job, a wedding, were they wanted nothing but truffles, bon bons, dipped strawberries, poured boxes, etc. instead of a groom's cake, I knew there was no way I was going to be complete the job and keep my insanity if I continued to temper my chocolate by hand. At that point I decided to invest in a table top tempering machine. There are different makes and models, and they are expensive, but it has been worth every penny. It just depends on how much and how often you temper chocolate. You can even find them on ebay and you can find reconditioned ones. I have the Rev2 from Chocovision. I thought I bought it directly from Chocovision, but I may have found it cheaper on another website. Chocovision's customer service has been great! I have talked directly to one of the top people at the company serveral time (especially when I didn't know what I was doing!!) This is the model I have:

http://www.chocovision.com/choco/site/revolation2_spec.htm

It is marked as $479, but I don't remember paying quite that much. You can find it on other websites like amazon, kitchenkrafts, and chocosphere.

I do know a cheaper, much cheaper alternative. This is one I acutaully learned in a chocolate class taught by an "expert", a chocolatier or whatever it is they call themselves! LOL! Anyway!!! If you use a high quality summer coating (candy melt) - - NOT WILTON, mixed with your good quality chocolate, you can get away with not tempering your chocolate. I have done this and it works.

When I am making chocolates that are not for profit, that I am just taking to work or giving away - I made a ton at Christmas that were gifts - It would have just been too expensive to use Callebaut chocolate and give it all away, so I used a good coating chocoate and callebaut.

You mix 2/3 coating and 1/3 chocolate and you don't have to temper. Everyone still thought it tasted great. To be honest, I didn't notice the difference. That is what the person teaching the class said too, the average person wouldn't know the diiference -- you would never sell this kind of chocolate in a chocolate shop or enter it in a competion, but as a decoration on a cake or whatever, the average person isn't going to be able to tell the difference. Also it will stretch your really good chocolate farther.

Susan
www.SweetFinaleDFW.com

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mthiberge Posted 30 Jan 2007 , 7:54pm
post #7 of 14

That's really good to know, I just finished culinary school and let me tell you, there has to be a better way to do it then standing at a marble table for half an hour smearing chocolate around. That's the old school method and it works but in the end the unexpirienced average person looks....well chocolaty LOL

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BlakesCakes Posted 30 Jan 2007 , 10:40pm
post #8 of 14

Hi, Susan.
Thanks for that tip--it will serve most of my purposes!

Another tip I've been given is that if you can melt all of your chocolate without it ever going above it's ideal temper point, you don't have to do anything else. That rules out the microwave because that always has hot spots, but if you have a gas oven, apparently you can put a tray of chocolate in it overnight and the pilot light will do the trick. If you have an oven that has a warm setting that doesn't go above 90 degrees, you can do it, too, but you have to watch the white & milk chocolate pretty well. I know someone who does it on a warming tray with a tea towel to insulate the pan from the tray surface. This is obviously reasonable only when you plan ahead well and have some time to wait, too.

Rae

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mamacc Posted 31 Jan 2007 , 1:35am
post #9 of 14

Thanks for the great tips! I've never heard of adding coating chocolate but that's a great idea. Does it have to be 1/3 and 2/3 or can you use more chocolate?

Also, for tempering there is Jaques Torres' method of adding the chopped seed chocolate and mixing with a hand blender. This brings the temp down quickly. I tried this the last time and it worked great except I didn't have quite enough chopped chocolate so I had to stir it the rest of the way.

I have a question: Most info I've read says to bring chocolate down to 86 degrees, but the temps on the back of the Callebaut bar says 80 degrees?? Why the difference?

Courtney

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BlakesCakes Posted 31 Jan 2007 , 1:48am
post #10 of 14

It depends on the type of chocolate, but the general guidelines are:

88-90F for semisweet chocolate, 84-86F for milk chocolate, and 82-84F for white chocolate.

I have no idea were 80F would come from--is it white chocolate?, but even at that it would be pretty cold and wouldn't stay very fluid for very long.

Rae

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mamacc Posted 31 Jan 2007 , 2:44am
post #11 of 14

Yeah....It wasn't very fluid at 80F. On the back of the 11 lb bar of Callebaut dark chocolate it has a preparation section. It shows a "crystallization curve" and it shows the temperatures as a line graph starting at (104-113F), then the graph goes down to 80.6F, then back up to 87.8-89.6 for the final temp.

Any other Callebaut users notice this?

Courtney

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BlakesCakes Posted 31 Jan 2007 , 4:32am
post #12 of 14

Ah, Courtney, I think I get it now--

I took one class where we were instructed to take the dark chocolate up to 104+, back down to 82, and then back up to 89-90 so that it would be fluid enough to pour.

I've since been taught that it's not really necessary to go to that in-between low temp if you seed the initially heated chocolate with pieces of the original (already tempered) block of chocolate. As that newly tempered liquid chocolate cools, you can gently re-heat it to keep it at 88-90 degrees for pouring.

Here's a link that will explain it well--go to mid page were it talks about the seed method:

http://www.cookingforengineers.com/article.php?id=155&title=Tempering+Chocolate

Rae

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mamacc Posted 31 Jan 2007 , 3:27pm
post #13 of 14

Thanks Rae! That makes sense! It will be a lot easier not bringing the temp all the way down to 80F!

Courtney

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smbanda Posted 1 Feb 2007 , 4:50am
post #14 of 14
Quote:
Originally Posted by mamacc

Thanks for the great tips! I've never heard of adding coating chocolate but that's a great idea. Does it have to be 1/3 and 2/3 or can you use more chocolate?




I have never tried any other proportion. The more chocolate you add, the more you risk having to temper it.... or not having a product that looks good. I guess you could play around with it and see.

Susan

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