Ping Ping King

Eating delicious chocolates is nothing but an ecstatic experience with its creamy texture, lustrous sheen, and clean snap but did you know that these aren’t natural to chocolates but are imparted only by tempering, a process which involves heating, cooling and reheating chocolates at precise temperatures?

Tempering is a tough process because when you maintain temperatures, they should always be accurate at all times and there shouldn’t even be slight changes. This aspect of tempering is what unsettles even the more experienced chocolatiers, because of so many reasons:

• This step of maintaining accurate temperatures is necessitated because the fatty acids of cocoa butter, what makes chocolates creamy, form six crystal structures and each behaves dominantly at a particular, specific temperature.
• The specific temperature you should maintain is the one at which the type V crystals flourish and that doesn’t give scope to other types of crystals to form. This is because the type V crystals are the ones that give shine and snap to chocolate.
• If you don’t control temperatures, you’ll allow other types of crystals to form and will interfere in the production of type V crystals, consequently spoiling the tempering process. You’ll be forced to repeat tempering until you get it right somehow.
• In tabliering and seeding, the two methods with which you can do tempering by hand, maintaining specific temperatures is the rule of thumb.
• You should also ensure the absence of moisture not only in your work area but also in the equipment you use, as well as employ a reliable thermometer to achieve tempering success.

Bulk production of chocolates would require the facility of tempering machine because several batches of chocolates can achieve unvarying quality with its help. Further, the hassle of maintaining specific temperatures is taken up by a computer chip; it’ll also retain chocolate’s tempered state longer. Since the time saved can be converted into concentrating on perfecting your chocolate making craft, in the long run you’d have made chocolates that pass the critical scrutiny of ever-discerning customers spectacularly.

It is important that you do know how to go about tempering by hand for when emergencies demand it. Still, investing in a chocolate tempering machine will only serve your business well in the long run.