Chocolate!!!

Chocolate is easily one of my favorite foods, the darker the better. This is one of the sections I have been most looking forward to, and we got to spend all day working with it! Specifically, learning three methods of tempering. I thought I would give a brief "intro" to chocolate tempering. I think its super interesting, especially since it involves a fair bit of science! What impresses me, is that people have known how to do this for several hundred years, without being able to see the crystal structure of cocoa butter-the key aspect of tempering.

When you buy chocolate, it is in its tempered form. This form is the most ideal, it has the highest melting point, its shiny, with good snap, and a pleasant mouth feel. But in order to work with chocolate to make confections you must first melt the chocolate, and therefore take it out of temper. The cocoa butter in chocolate is polymorphic and can take on six different configurations. The beta-conformation is most ideal, the other five are not! When chocolate is melted the particules are in constant random motion, and could form any one of the structures. The goal of tempering is to direct this formation. The method I like is seeding. By introducing a piece of tempered chocolate to the melted chocolate as a director. Once all the chocolate is melted (around 115 degrees), you add a bit of solid chocolate bringing the temperature down to around 88 degrees. At this point beta-crystals will form, but it is still above the melting point of the other conformations. By agitating within this working range (87 to 89) you aim to allow enough beta crystals to form so that the majority of the final chocolate product is in temper. When done correctly and poured it will contract (since the beta crystals are tightly packed and space-optimized), it will be easily un-molded.

Sounds simple enough. And it is, as long as you constantly pay close attention to details, such as taking temperatures and avoiding contamination. If moisture gets it the cocoa will seize and the chocolate will be ruined. If the chocolate gets too hot it will burn, and be unusable. There are a variety of other small things that can influence the outcome of the chocolate, and there are degrees of temper quality.

Tomorrow we're making a chocolate cake and making decorations out of the chocolate we temper. Hopefully, it won't be nearly as cold as it was today. The room was in the 60's and as a result, many of us spent the day shivering, ending up with runny noses and cold headaches!