The Content Maker

The shine and smoothness, which aren’t the natural qualities of chocolates, can be acquired only by tempering. Due to conching, chocolate particles become fine to a certain extent but only when you temper do they become so small that you won’t feel the grains.

The glossy patina, firmness, smoothness, richness, and longer shelf life can be had only with proper tempering. You can also prevent blooming that causes large crystals to appear as whitish gray spots on the surface of chocolates. If your chocolates are crumbly and gritty due to non-tempering, you may find it difficult to sell them.

Since chocolate loses its temper when it’s melted, you’ll have to temper again as chocolate loses temper if it’s subjected to heating. If you’re seriously into making chocolate confections, manual tempering, which can be done in two ways will have to be learned because sometimes, you may have to do it despite the availability of a tempering machine.

It is from France that the first method called tabliering or marble-slab technique originated. In tablieing the melted chocolate is spread and worked on a heat-absorbing surface to cool to the right tempering temperatures.

You’ll need a pound of chocolate, which you’ll chop into thin strips and melt in a double boiler at moderate heat without burning. Once molten, you can either choose to have fruit-filled candy by enrobing with chocolate, or varied-shaped bars by creating shapes on air-dried chocolate with cookie cutters or candy molds. All the while you’re working on your chocolate design, don’t allow any deviations in the tempering temperatures. For this, use reliable thermometers that are calibrated often. Variations in temperatures will force you to re-temper as chocolates are very susceptible to heat.

“Seeding” is the second method of tempering by hand and everything is similar to tabliering except the fact that already-tempered chocolate is used as “seed” to temper chocolate. In this, you melt only three-fourths of the chocolate in the boiler and set aside the other third, which you’ll mix with the chocolate melt in the mixing bowl later. Maintaining the tempering temperatures accurately is necessary in “seeding” as well.

The fact that maintaining specific temperatures is the tough part of tempering by hand is acknowledged by expert chocolate producers, too. Since you can sometimes devote more time on this, you won’t have enough time to apply your creativity on chocolate design to make it an enjoyable experience. For gifting and commercial purposes, you may have to temper chocolates using chocolate tempering machines. If you use them, you’ll have enough flexibility to make chocolates of consistently excellent quality.