Tempered chocolate is amazing to work with and is best when using it for desserts. It has a shiny, glossy and flawless appearance and has that signature snap when you break into it. It melts in your mouth so smoothly, helping you to fully enjoy and appreciate the flavour of the chocolate. Tempering chocolate is when you slowly heat and cool the chocolate while stirring which puts it into temper to create this amazing texture. If chocolate is not tempered properly then it can become very dull and uneven. It can also have a chewy, cakey texture and will not taste as nice as when it’s tempered properly. You can use tempered chocolate for many things such as chocolate bowls and domes, truffles, dipped fruits and much more!
To achieve that signature appearance, taste and texture the best way to temper chocolate is below and remember that it’s best to make a good amount as a small amount is much harder to work with:
Ingredients needed:
- 200g high quality dark chocolate (you can use bars, buttons or chocolate drops).
Method:
1. Start of by chopping the chocolate onto a wooden chopping board with a sharp knife into small pieces if you’re using chocolate bars.
2. Next place a large saucepan filled with water half way through and heat but do not bring to the boil. When the water is hot, place a heat resistant bowl on top (make sure that the water is not touching the bottom of the bowl) and add in the chocolate pieces. Keep stirring slowly until the chocolate has melted all the way through. Check the temperature with a thermometer and if the chocolate has reached 55C- 58C then it’s ready.
3. Now that the chocolate is ready remove from the heat and use it in any way you like. To spread over desserts, simply pour over them, to make certain patterns you can pour the chocolate into a bottle/piping bag and make your designs etc. To make chocolate bowls, you can dip an inflated balloon base into it and wait for the chocolate to set and to make decorations pour the melted chocolate onto a clean surface to start with.
4. Using a flat spatula, spread the chocolate thinly, this will start to cool it more and will start to harden. Then while it’s still not fully cooled, make your decorations. This way you can make chocolate curls, ribbons and much more.
Tempered chocolate is a great way to increase you skills and give your desserts more dimensions and a deeper chocolatey flavour.
We hope you enjoy working with chocolate just as much as we do!
Happy tempering!
