One of the most time consuming and frustrating tasks facing pastry chefs is tempering chocolate. Chocolate is a finnicky ingredient that has a complex chemichal structure which needs to be handled just right. Improperly tempered chocolate is streaked with gray, and lacks that characteristic “snap” we all love. You see, cocoa butter, the fat in chocolate, asorbs heat at a different rate than the other ingredients (cocoa, sugar, etc.) so it can seperate and “float” to the top. The chocolate needs to be melted to a certain temperature (110-115 F,) cooled to another (80-82) and then rewarmed to yet another (87-91) to work with it. This process insures the the fat molecules are melted homogenously, and that its structure in relation to the other ingredients creates that perfect gloss, hardness, and shrinkage that makes a good chocolate candy, truffle, garnish or whatever. There are several methods for tempering; seeding, marbling, in the microwave, or my personal favorite, by robot. Pictured above is the Chocovision Revolation X3210 4.8. It takes all the guess work out of the tricky tempering process, and looks dead sexy while doing it. I’ve been using it to make candies and truffles for mignardes at the restaurant. Flavors so far include brown butter, white chocolate basil, butterscotch, orange, vanilla cream. All yummy, all the time. Interested in experimenting with chocolate? Don’t have a $1500 dollar robot? Check out this site.
[...] this book a lot, and if you don’t have it, get it. With the help of those recipes and my favorite robot, I can crank out about 300 chocolates on a good day. The Chef has even taken up an interest, and [...]
[...] cakes, or setting up banquet items, more than likely you’ll see me slaving away with my favorite robot making mignardises. The little tray of sweets we put down for free with every check is arguably [...]