Welcome to howtocookthat.net. For a printable copy of the recipes simply
go to www.howtocookthat.net. Today we are looking at how to temper chocolate
at home. Normal chocolate, not your specialty chocolate,
and without using a candy thermometer. So first of all, what is temper? When you buy chocolate, it normally already
is in temper, and that is all of the fat molecules, which is cocoa butter, are all lined up neatly
and tightly together. So that when you break your chocolate it will
have a nice snap to it, and it will have a nice gloss to it. When you melt it over a certain temperature,
fat breaks down into a disordered mess. And if you don’t temper it, which is the process
of bringing the temperatures up and down to a certain point, when it sets again it doesn’t
click back neatly together. It sets just like this, which then means at
room temperature instead of being hard, it will just bend, and melt. This is chocolate that we’ve tempered. It’s just been in the fridge for a few minutes,
and you hear it has a nice snap to it. This is a chocolate that hasn’t been tempered,
it’s been in the fridge. It’s still firm enough to use as a decoration,
but if we have a look it doesn’t really have that snap. It kind of just bends, it’s a lot softer. You can see here at room temperature after
five minutes, the non-tempered chocolate just bends and collapses. So in order to reset it and have that nice
crisp and gloss, we need to temper the chocolate. Or the other thing we can do is if you’ve
bought it and it is already in temper, if we don’t heat it too hot, we can keep it in
temper. So that’s what I’m going to show you how to
do today. So basically you need to get your chocolate,
and you need to grate it. The reason why you grate it is because the
smaller the pieces are, the easier it is to melt it at a lower temperature. If you’ve got big chunks, you are going to
have to heat it to too high a temperature, which is then going to cause those fat molecules
to break apart, which is not what we want. The important thing as well to remember is
that you need a microwave-proof bowl that is not glass; glass holds the heat, so it’s
going to keep heating it once you take it out of the microwave, which is not what we
want. We need about two-thirds of our chocolate
in the bowl, and then we’ll reserve about one-third to mix in after to bring the temperature
down. Okay? So what we’re going to do is we’re going to
microwave this just in 10 second bursts. 10 seconds, stir, 10 seconds, stir, 10 seconds,
stir until it’s melted. That’s had five 10 second bursts and stirring,
and you can see it’s still got some little lumps in it. So, we will give it another 5 second burst,
but it’s nearly there. You don’t want to overheat it, remember? If you overheat it, those fat molecules are
going to fall apart, and then it’s out of temper, then you’ve got to work hard to get
it back in. So I just gave it 10 more seconds, and that
is nearly nice and melted. We’re now going to tip in the chocolate that
we left at the side, and stir that through. And then we are just going to give it 5 more
seconds in the microwave until it’s just melted, you can see that it’s very thick. The reason it’s still very thick is because
it’s normal chocolate, it’s not your specialty courveture chocolate. So it has a lower amount of cocoa butter in
it, so at this correct temperature, your specialty chocolate would be quite runny, but your normal
chocolate isn’t. You can use your tempered chocolate to make
lollipops, curls, swirlies, decorations for desserts, chocolate shards. For instructions on how to do these, click
on the link below to see more videos, or click to subscribe to get updated when new videos
come in. Video source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2aPf1wSjds
