Welcome to how to cook that
I am Ann Reardon
Today I am going to answer all of the most commonly asked questions about working with
chocolate.
We'll talk about what chocolate to use
Explain what tempering is and show you how to temper in
4 different
1st question come is from Tasnim: Hi Ann do you know how I can find
out if I have fake chocolate or real chocolate?
That's a good question...
what you need to do is read the ingredients if it contains cocoa butter it is real chocolate
If it contains vegetable fat then it is compound chocolate or fake chocolate.
Nadi asks what kind of chocolate do I need for this?
Could I use chocolate chips?
I have two packets of chocolate chips or buttons here to show you and if you check the ingredients
on this one it is real chocolate containing cocoa butter and if you check the ingredients
on the other one it is a fake chocolate or compound chocolate containing vegetable fat.
So there is no way to tell from the shape of the chocolate you need to read the ingredients.
On chocolate butterflies video nelhassan777 asks what do you mean by fake chocolate?
what brands would you recommend?
Well I have two types of chocolate here one is real and one is fake.
And they are both the same brand the only way you can tell is the check the ingredients
on your packet.
The next question that I had quite a few times was can you eat fake chocolate?
Yes you can.
Sorry if I confused you.
I tend to use fake chocolate if I am making something very thin like the chocolate paper,
chocolate butterflies, chocolate flowers and feathers because it is easier to work with.
It just has a higher melting point than the real chocolate does so for the really fine
stuff it is not going to melt as quickly.
I'll link you the playlist at the end of all my different chocolate videos at the end of
this video and the in the description below as well.
Leanne : If I have to temper chocolate is it real or fake?
Real chocolate needs tempering and thats the chocolate that contains cocoa butter of course.
And fake or compound chocolate does not need tempering.
Megan: What's is the difference between tempering and melting your chocolate?
Let me show you if I just melt it and then leave it at room temperature it doesn't set.
These ones have been tempered and this one hasn't been and see how it is not setting.
You can make it set by putting it in the fridge like I have done here... but when you take
it out of the fridge and leave it at room temperature it will go soft again.
So if you've made beautiful decorations and you serve your dessert to the table the are
all going to bend over.
But if you temper the chocolate and spread thinly like this is will set firm at room
temp in about 6 minutes.
Tempering also gives your chocolate a nice shine and it will give it a good snap sound
when you break it.
Let me explain what is happening in the chocolate...
Lets pretend that we have a microscope and we've zoomed right inside the chocolate bar
to look at the cocoa butter the fat in the chocolate the actual cocoa butter crystals.
When you buy chocolate it is in temper And the cocoa butter are all joined together
nicely giving that shine and snap.
When you put it in a bowl and heat it up either in the microwave or over a double boiler it
starts to melt and those cocoa butter crystals change form, then when you keep heating it
it changes even more.
And you melt the cocoa butter crystals completely into these tiny little pieces.
Now that you have melted it if you just leave it to set the cocoa butter crystals don't
get organized in the right way.
Just like if you leave clothes all over the floor they don't pick themselves up.
So if you leave it on its own the cocoa butter crystals will set like this which isn't as
stable they can just slide over each other.
So your chocolate is not firm and lovely at room temperature.
chocolatek says : if it doesn't set it is throwing a temper tantrum!!
I like that one.
So how do we get it back in order?
So how do we get it back in order - You need to temper it.
And there are a few different ways to do that.
One cheats way that I showed you before is to keep it in temper.
To only heat it very slightly so that it melts but the chocolate crystals stay in this form.
And then when you leave it to set they will go back together properly.
To do that you need to do that in your microwave.
What you need to do is grate your chocolate.
Now Anika says do you know how to make finely grated white chocolate I can't find it in
my country?
Well what you do is you take a block of chocolate and use a grater to grate it up.
Miss GIJoe says hand grate chocolate ain't nobody got time fa dat
Well you can use a food processor if you prefer to grate your chocolate.
kittydebarr To grate the chocolate can I put it in a coffee grinder?
MMM I don't think so.
So you've grated your chocolate, we've got past step one.
Now put it into a microwave safe plastic bowl, and microwave on high heat for 20 seconds
then stir.
Don't use a glass bowl because it gets too hot and you'll end up melting the cocoa butter
particles completely.
Microwave for another 10 seconds and then stir.
And you need to stir each time because the microwave heats unevenly.
And you'll get hot spots if you don't.
Then another 10 seconds, stir again.
The reason we grated it is because bigger chunks take longer to melt so you end up heating
it to too higher temp to get it to melt if you don't do that.
Another 10 seconds stir and it is getting soft but it is still too thick to work with.
Finally give it a final 10 seconds and you're done.
For each of these I'm going to spread it out on some baking paper give it a little shake
to get rid of any air bubbles.
And we'll tip some into an ice-cube tray so you can see what they look like when they
are molded.
You can see now this one is set.
It holds it's shape at room temperature but there is an air bubble here and that's because
it was still quite thick.
PanderflyLUV is there any way to get the chocolate to a runnier consistency while still keeping
it in temper?
Yes if you have a candy thermometer you could put it back in the microwave for 5 more seconds
at a time.
Ingenious leprechaun says how do you know if you've overheated it?
Is there a certain temperature it could not go past?
That's there is a temperature that you need to keep it below and that is different for
milk chocolate and dark chocolate so I'll put those on the screen now.
If you go over those your chocolate will melt completely.
Khris So basically just put it in the microwave?
No, sorry Khris if you just melt it in the microwave it will go out of temper.
You need to keep it below that temperature or it won't work.
Ashley says Instead of grating the chocolate could i use powdered chocolate?
Like ovaltine or nesquick?
Tiffany can I use hersheys syrup Mona is it possible to temper nutella
For all of those types of questions they are flavoured chocolate flavoured but they are
not chocolate.
You cant use them to make chocolate decorations.
They are not going to melt and set in the way chocolate does.
Kimberly What if you don't have a microwave, this was the most asked question on that video..
can you use a double boiler instead?
You can't use a double boiler to keep it in temper because it makes that chocolate too
hot and melts all the cocoa butter crystals.
But we can do a bit of work to reorganize them.
I'll show you three ways to do that.
One of them is using freeze dried cocoa butter that is already in temper.
And I'll link to where you can buy this in the description below.
It's not cheap but you only need a tiny bit.
Completely melt your chocolate either in the microwave or yes over a double boiler.
If you're using the microwave I did 30sec stir, 15 seconds stir, 10 seconds stir.
Then grab a candy thermometer and check the temperature.
Now you will need to cool it until it comes down to about 97F, this took about 10 minutes.
You could speed that up by putting it a bowl of iced water underneath your main bowl.
Add in a teaspoon of the freeze dried cocoa butter and stir it though.
What this is doing is just at the point where the chocolate is about to form the crystals
your throwing in some that are the way we want them to be and the others all just follow
the leader and make the right formation.
If you add it when the chocolate is too hot you will just completely melt the cocoa butter
particles so it wont help temper it at all.
If you add it when it is too cold you're not going to melt all the freeze dried cocoa butter
bits and you'll get little white dots on your chocolates.
Which tastes fine but it looks a little bit weird.
Stir it really well and then use it for whatever you want .
Here I have an upside down baking tray with a cooling rack over the top.
Pile icing sugar on top of that and then pipe your tempered chocolate back and forth over
the top.
Once it is set gently lift up the cooling rack and let the icing sugar fall through
so you are left with your chocolate mountains type structure.
You can break them up into smaller pieces and use on desserts for decorations.
The chocolate that I spread out is set on the edges after only about 3 minutes.
Once it is fully set all the way through to the middle after about 6.
You can see it has a really good shine.
The next method to temper your chocolate is called tabling.
You can melt your chocolate in the microwave or over a pan of simmering water.
Just get a heat proof bowl and put it over your pan.
The bowl should be bigger than the rim of the pan so it traps in the steam in and so
the bottom of the bowl doesn't come in contact with the water.
Once it is completely melted tip out 2/3 of your chocolate onto a cool surface, stone
or marble is best for this.
Spread out the chocolate to cool it down and then bring it back into the middle so we can
keep all of the chocolate an even temperature all the way through.
Otherwise it will cool down and set on the edges and not be what we need int he middle.
Keep doing this spreading it and then scraping it all back into the middle.
And the chocolate will go from being runny to starting to thicken up.
And what is happening is by agitating it like this while it is cooling.
We are stopping those not good chocolate crystals from forming SO we are just scraping it in
and sort of irritating it just as it goes to from those cocoa butter crystals going
no don't do that we want it differently and then when it gets down to a certain temperature
it will form the right ones if you've stopped it forming the other ones.
So keep going until it gets nice and thick.
Once you can scrape some up from the srcaper like this and drop it off and it forms ribbons
and the ribbons stay on top of the pile it is ready.
Scrape it up into the bowl with the rest of the chocolate and stir that through and that
will just thin it down so it is thin enough to work with.
Now you can just pipe that chocolate.
Make lolipops if you want just pipe chocolate lolipops and sprinkle with
hundreds and thousands they make a nice colourful party snack.
You can see the molded chocolate here made using the tabling method is beautifully shiny
it looks really good.
The next method is called seeding and this is pretty much the same thing that we did
with the freeze dried cocoa butter but we are going to use a chunk of chocolate instead.
Melt the chocolate either in the microwave or double boiler.
Once it is melted take it off the heat and stir it until it gets down to about 97F then
add in a chunk of tempered chocolate.
Keep stirring it around with the chunk of chocolate in it.
If you've added it in when the chocolate was too hot the chunk will just melt completely
and you'll need to add another one.
Stir until it comes down to about around 91 then take out the chunk and you're good to
go.
Ashish: Do we need to temper compound chocolate?
No you don't compound chocolate does not need tempering you can melt it in the microwave
or the double boiler, spread it out use it in molds, and it will set at room temperature
and have a nice shine.
It is very easy to use
Nilaya saya can we just use compound or fake chocolate?
Yes you can, but it does not taste as good as real chocolate.
It has a higher melting point so that means it doesn't melt in your mouth and release
the flavours as quickly as real chocolate does.
If you get water in your chocolate it will seize.
That can be useful if you want it to look like.
If you want your chocolate to look like rocks like I did on the marvel cake, then you can
do that.
But otherwise your only hope is to add more liquid like cream of milk and stir it in then
out it through a fine sieve and you've got ganache or a chocolate sauce.
The other thing that can do is burn your chocolate if you don't stir it when you are trying to
melt it or if you just keep heating it up and up to too high a temperature it will burn.
So do stop and stir the chocolate.
Katie - can you use not compound chocolate and tempered chocolate just normal chocolate?
Well hopefully this video explained that for you Katie.
Now I have a question for all of you How many times in this video did I say chocolate?
I think it is quite a few.
Put your answers in the comments below.
Click here to go to the how to cook that channel to see all the videos, here to go to the chocolate
playlist so you can see all the different chocolate videos and here to go to the website
howtocookthat.net Have a great week and I'll see you all on
Friday.
[song: the boat song by youtube.com/setsailtv used with permission]