Joe’s Chocolate Recipes

When making chocolates, it is often not enough just to melt the chocolate! Cocoa butter is a very complex material which can set in various different “crystal structures” ,only one of which gives the nice gloss, fine-grained texture, and the satisfying “snap” that we all expect from chocolate. The process used to achieve this state of affairs is known as tempering.

If you’re mixing chocolate with something else, like cream to make truffles for instance, you won’t generally need to temper the chocolate. But when you are using chocolate as a coating, for sweets or cakes, in order to achieve a good finish, you need to carefully control the temperature. This can be quite involved, but  here is a fairly straightforward method that can be used at home:

• First heat the chocolate to 40-45 °C to fully melt all the fats (a double boiler or bain marie is ideal for doing this at home). Follow the instructions in our “Choosing & Melting” article to avoid problems.

• Then allow it to cool to 34-35 °C for dark chocolate, or 33-34 °C for milk or white chocolate (a digital cooking thermometer is recommended).

• At this point, add around 1% of ready tempered chocolate – usually simply adding some (un-melted) chocolate straight from the packet will work, although you can also buy specially prepared cocoa butter from home chocolate making suppliers for this purpose.

• Stir thoroughly to melt the added chocolate, and allow the mixture to cool slowly to 31-32 °C (dark chocolate) or 29-30 °C (milk & white chocolate).

• You can now check the temper of the chocolate by dipping the tip of a knife into it - if the chocolate hardens quickly to a nice gloss and “snaps” cleanly, it is ready to use. It should be kept at the current temperature and occasionally stirred to maintain its temper.

• If you are making a moulded item, warm the mould gently and make sure it is completely dry before pouring the chocolate into it, or you may find that the temper is spoiled (often it shows as whitish grey patches or streaks).

• Once tempered chocolate is poured, it needs to be cooled quickly or it loses its temper while setting. This is why large chocolate items are always hollow - they would set too slowly if they were solid. The ideal temperature for cooling chocolate is around 10 °C.