As it was my birthday recently, I received a heap of cool stuff to get me started with making chocolate craft. Yesterday was my first attempt at tempering chocolate. Tempering is a process used to invoke desirable qualities in chocolate such as shiney exterior, smooth texture and general niceness! You start by heating small pieces of chocolate until it reaches its melting point of 44C then take it off the heat (using a bain marie makes life easier than guessing with a microwave) and stir in some more small pieces of choclate till that melts. The aim is to achieve a temperature of 32C so the chocolate becomes 'stable' enough to work with. Once I'd done this, I rather messily ladled quantities of chocolate into some moulds, tapped them on the side to dispell any air bubbles and put them in the fridge for half an hour. As a first attempt, I was quite chuffed as they had a passable shine to them. Although I still need lots of practise as the chocolate melted quite quickly in the hands which is a sign that it wasn't tempered correctly. I'm sure my family will not mind me practising some more!
Thanks to my family for helping with starting me in becoming a just-for-the-fun-of-it chocolatier!
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1 comment:
You're very welcome. Just wish I was there to help eat your experiments!
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