Hi everyone! I’m Brittnee, welcome back to my channel!
Today I’m going to teach you the absolute easiest way to temper chocolate. It’s the fastest,
plus you don’t need a thermometer, a double boiler, or a marble slab!
All you need is a microwave, a plastic bowl, and some couverture chocolate.
If you’re not sure what couverture chocolate is, it’s just a high quality
chocolate with no stabilizers and a higher percentage of cocoa butter.
If you simply just melt it and try to use it, it will not set up hard. You have to temper it!
Before we get into it, I wanted to quickly explain to you how
tempering works for those of you that are interested in the science behind it.
*slurp* ahh :)
So like I mentioned before, the fat in the chocolate is called
cocoa butter and it can develop 6 different types of crystals that have different characteristics
and different melting points.
The beta crystals are the kind that have the characteristics that we want, so we need to
encourage the chocolate to develop those types of crystals as it sets up. If we develop enough
beta crystals as it’s setting up there won’t be as much room for other unstable crystals to develop.
If the chocolate is not tempered correctly and unstable crystals do form,
you’ll know by a couple different ways:
It might taste grainy when you eat it.
It might have white spots or streaks, which is called blooming.
It’ll take a really long time to set up.
And it’ll also melt really easily when you touch it.
Alright let’s get tempering! And just so you know, this technique works with dark, white, and milk
chocolate. Today I’m going to be dark chocolate Callebaut bittersweet chocolate callets…is that
how you say that word. Callet? Callet? I’m not French, is it French? I’m looking it up! Callet,
Scottish. Scottish? Callet. Callet, Scottish. What if it’s not Scottish? I’m going to omit that word…
Callebaut bittersweet chocolate couverture.
And I’m just going to pour my chocolate into a plastic bowl.
Now you don’t want to use glass because glass retains heat and can burn your chocolate and make
it go out of temper. So basically the method to do this in the microwave is to melt the chocolate for
30 seconds at a time until it’s half liquid. Then we’re going to stir it vigorously
until it’s smooth. So, 30 seconds in the microwave at a time…
So here’s the chocolate after the first 30 seconds. Not much of a change. 30 more…
Here’s after 60 seconds.
They’re starting to look less dry, but they’re not quite melted yet.
And it’s important to stir in between so that the chocolate’s melting more
evenly and not getting too hot in the center. So, 30 more seconds…
So this is after a minute and 30 seconds. And you can see it’s starting to melt,
but it’s sticking together. So that is not half melted yet, so 30 more seconds…
Ok so I was actually getting a little bit nervous and I stopped it at
20 seconds because I didn’t want to overdo it. And it looks about half melted now so
I’m just going to stir it vigorously until all the little pellets are melted.
Hmmm
my arm’s getting tired…
Now once the chocolate is all smooth, it’s time to test it to make sure it was tempered correctly.
So you’re just going to dip something like a plastic bowl scraper into the chocolate. And
it should set up in about 5 minutes. If it doesn’t it might be out of temper. And I’m
also going to show you what it looks like spread out on a piece of acetate. Cause when
it sets up on the acetate it will be nice and shiny and then we can test the snap as well.
Alright so I set my timer and it’s only been about 4 minutes and look! You can already tell it’s set
up. You can tell because it looks dull and when I touch it it’s firm, like there is nothing on
my fingers. So it’s not melty anymore so it’s perfectly tempered and ready to use.
Now for the acetate test I’m just going to pop it in the fridge for a couple minutes so that
the chocolate seizes and pulls away from the acetate and I’ll show you what it looks like.
Now I’ve only left it in the fridge just long enough so that it peels
really easily off the acetate as you can see.
And the acetate makes it nice and shiny like this. And when you break it you will hear a snap.
It was really thin, like, it’s really really thin. If I would have done it thicker the snap
would be louder, but basically that’s the test and it looks really good. And it’s not even
melting in my hand even though it’s super thin, so good sign of tempered chocolate.
Now once you’ve properly tempered your chocolate, you can use it for
just about anything, garnishes, decorations, or molded chocolates.
Once you’re finished with it, just spread it out on parchment until it’s set up,
then you can break it up and reuse it again.
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Thanks so much for watching today and I’ll see you soon, bye!