What Is Behind Chocolate Tempering
March 10th, 2010Making chocolate confectioneries will require a finer grade chocolate than making chocolate chip cookies or chocolate fudge. Tempering is essential with these chocolates; only when it’s done right that you can get the richness, glossiness, creaminess and smoothness that chocolate lovers desire in their confectionery. Aside from that tempering can also prolong the keeping time of your chocolate candy and make it stay un-melted even at room temperature.
Chocolate that has not been tempered will produce an unappealing quality on chocolates–some become flaky, coarse and speckled. Aside from that, un-tempered chocolates are prone to blooming, where whitish spots appear on chocolate; and it will quickly melt in a short span of two days.
Chocolate contains cocoa butter; this is the reason why it needs tempering. Cocoa butter possesses fatty acids that have a polymorphic character, meaning during crystallization the appearance of six crystal types is possible. Tempering should be done with proper chocolate temperature control and care to attain the finest quality type of chocolate. All the three types of chocolates namely, dark chocolate, milk chocolate and white chocolate should be tempered because all of them have cocoa butter. The particles comprising the cocoa butter should bind together to form crystals. The type of crystals that will be created will rely on the temperature that you have during tempering.
Just like any other element, chocolate has its own melting and freezing temperatures. Freezing is the stage where the particles will bond together and solidify because of the applied temperature. Water, for example, will melt at a given temperature of 32F; however, if you try to apply a lower temperature such as 0F, water will turn into solid and becomes ice.
When temperature drops to freezing point, crystals form. These crystals that have been formed will pack up in the space that was before occupied by the liquid particles. When freezing point has been reached, the entire space has been crammed full of the crystal particles. The density of the solid formed will rely on the stability of the crystals that you have created.
Just like water, chocolate in its solid form have crystals that are stable and bonded together because of tempering. It will take some force to create a change in its shape. If the tempering is properly done, it will remain un-melted even in room temperature of about 77F. When it is heated up, it will melt at approximately 96F, a two-degree difference from the normal temperature of the body which is 98F. At this point, the crystals bonds in chocolate will disintegrate and you’ll need to temper again to create the type V crystals necessary for chocolate’s attractive appearance.