Willy Wonka Would Be Jealous... Chocolate Tempering for Dummies

Right after I started this blog, I found the most amazing book in all of my cooking experience...
The Field Guide to Candy: How to Identify and Make Virtually Any Candy.  Anyone who knows me in the slightest knows I have quite a sweet tooth.  Over the past year, almost year and a half, I have learned that I can cook well enough to be dangerous in my new apartment and my new kitchen.  I can follow a recipe and can usually make it well enough to make it at least edible.  But how do you make a lollipop?  Or fudge?  Or salt-water taffy?  Or peanut butter cups?  This book has the secret to them all.  But all of the chocolate recipes call for this complicated-sounding process called "tempering."  It was intimidating and sounded painfully tedious and required perfect timing, temperatures, and skill to get it just right.  All of the recipes repeated the necessity of mastering the tempering process before doing any of the chocolate recipes... I was therefore sidelined from any chocolate yumminess unless I would settle for blue-gray, dull chocolate...  So instead I read through the book and salivated at the colorful photographs of peppermint bark, and fudge, and peanut brittle.  But did I dream of trying any of the recipes?  Dream, yes, but actually try... no. 

And then Saturday morning I found myself watching the Food Network and my favorite TV chef--Ina Garten of Barefoot Contessa.  And guess what?  She was teaching the world how to do a simple chocolate tempering process because she doesn't think it's worth it to do the time-consuming version when the same end result can be accomplished in an easier way. And what did I do?  Immediately grabbed my Field Guide and started finding the first chocolate recipe I was going to make that required tempering.


What is tempering?  Why is tempering done?
Most tempering processes require special chocolate thermometers and specific mixers and lots of gadgets that my first kitchen simply doesn't have.  But for any recipe that requires melting chocolate, tempering is essential.  Tempering is an important process in any type of chocolate cooking.  Tempering gives the chocolate its final gloss, hardness, and it effects the contraction of the chocolate.  Melting chocolate causes the fate molecules to separate; to get the molecules to stick back together, you have to temper it.  

There are 2 easy ways to temper chocolate, the one that Ina demonstrated seems the easiest.  The whole idea of tempering chocolate is not to let the temperature get too hot -- you want the heated chocolate to be only slightly warmer than your bottom lip.  Take a large, solid piece of chocolate (white, milk, dark, whichever) and use a sharp knife or peeler to shave the chocolate off.  Keeping the chocolate in smaller pieces will help the chocolate to melt at an even temperature.  


Put the shaved chocolate in a microwave-safe glass bowl and heat on high power for 30 seconds; remove and stir the chocolate.  Be very careful not to overheat it.  Keep repeating this process--30 seconds in the microwave, remove and stir--until the chocolate is nearly melted.  Chocolate can retain its shape even when mostly melted, but the any remaining lumps will melt in the chocolate's residual heat when stirred.  


As the chocolate cools, it will begin to set and crystalize along the side of the bowl.  Add any of the leftover shavings of chocolate to the bowl and mix the cooling crystals into the already melted chocolate to temper it.  Doing it slowly and step-by-step helps to keep the temperature down.  Ina recommends using a glass bowl because it retains the heat and keeps the chocolate tempered longer.


So now that I know an easy, idiot-proof method of tempering chocolate, the recipe book seems a lot less intimidating.   I think it might just be a perfect Sunday to practice some chocolate tempering and maybe even try a recipe.  Now... dark chocolate bark with nuts or chocolate covered strawberries?  Decisions decisions...