Can you temper chocolate chips

Quickly and easily temper chocolate in your microwave using the partial melt method. Course Dessert. Cuisine American, French, Italian. Cook Time 3 minutes. Cooling Time 10 minutes. Total Time 13 minutes. Servings 8. Calories kcal. Author Stefani. US Customary — Metric. Instructions Place the chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl. In my microwave, I do it for a minute at half power, then microwave for thirty more seconds at half power for the next interval.

Wait until the chocolate cools slightly before using it. If you have a candy thermometer recommended , check to make sure it has cooled to 90 F for dark, semisweet, and bittersweet chocolate or 86 F for milk and white chocolate before using it. Notes For the chocolate, you can use:. Have you tried this recipe? Click here to leave a comment and rating! Loading comments Stay Connected! Ingredients 1 pound of chocolate. Instructions Place a medium saucepan filled about half way with water over medium-low heat on your stove.

Allow the water to come to a simmer. Add the chocolate to a heat-proof boil or the top portion of a double boiler if you have one , and place the bowl on top of the saucepan. Turn the heat under the pan off.

Let the chocolate sit in the bowl over the saucepan of hot water until in begins to melt around the edges, then stir the chocolate until smooth, while monitoring the temperature using a candy thermometer. Tempered chocolate will quickly solidify as it cools, so you'll need to move as quickly as possible while you're dipping fruit, nuts, or truffles in the tempered chocolate, while also gently stirring to keep the chocolate fluid.

Notes Dark chocolate temper point is typically between 88 and 90 degrees F while Milk Chocolate 86 and 88 degrees F, though you should always check depending on the brand of chocolate you purchase, because it is possible for chocolates to vary across manufacturers. Recommended Products As an Amazon Associate and member of other affiliate programs, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Did you make this recipe? Stocking Stuffer Ideas for the Baker. Click here to cancel reply. Krystina Wednesday 23rd of December Elizabeth Start Monday 14th of December What was new was the chocolate candies I was planning on making to serve along with the coffee after the meal.

Just melt chocolate, pour it into molds, add some flavorings, and let it set? That's child's play , I thought to myself. Everything was going well through the melting phase.

I had no problem getting liquid chocolate to pour into my molds. But those darn candies refused to firm up! Even after an hour in the fridge, they were soft and melty to the touch. Figuring I'd try again, I re-melted that chocolate, this time while I was busy working on other projects. When I went back to the bowl and started stirring, the chocolate started forming grainy lumps.

What do I do? I thought. I know! I'll bet the chocolate just lost too much moisture as it was warming up. I'll add some hot water to it. That's the ticket! I started stirring vigorously as I trickled in a little stream of steaming hot water. Almost instantly, the chocolate seized up into a grainy, dull, broken mess.

Luckily, folks were drunk enough by the time coffee service rolled around that nobody missed the chocolate. This was my first and most humbling foray into the world of chocolate-making, and since then I've learned how tricky chocolate can be to work with and the importance of proper tempering.

It's not something you need to know if you're just making a chocolate cake or perhaps a ganache, but if dipping, decorating, or making chocolate candies is your goal, it's an essential technique in your repertoire. There are many ways to temper chocolate, some involving more equipment than others, but I'm going to go over the ones I think are most suited for home cooks.

The first is the classic stovetop or microwave method. The second is a method I picked up from Alton Brown, which uses a food processor and a hair dryer.

The third—and to my mind best—is using a sous-vide cooker. You can jump straight to any of the techniques below, or read on for mored details on the hows and whys. To temper chocolate properly, there's no two ways about it. You will need a good thermometer like the Thermapen or Thermopop. Once you've got that thermometer, there's really not much more to it. With most cooking fats and liquids, there's a magic temperature above which they're liquid and below which they're solid.

Simple, right? Chocolate, on the other hand, follows its own set of rules. Sure, it has a melting temperature, but depending on precisely how long it's been held at a given temperature or how forcefully it's been agitated, its texture once solidified can vary drastically.

Why is this? It's because cocoa fat, the primary constituent in chocolate that gives it its solid texture, can form various types of crystals ranging from loose and unstable to well-structured and firm. Tempering is the process of heating chocolate to a series of precisely defined temperatures and working it in order to maximize its chances of forming a tight, stable structure. Well-tempered chocolate should set up with a smooth, lightly glossy finish and a firm snap.

Poorly tempered chocolate may appear mottled, spotted, or pale, with a soft, sometimes grainy texture. Sounds confusing, right? But it's actually pretty simple. It helps to think of cocoa fat as a bag that's filled with lego bricks along with an army of elves on-call to snap them together.

The goal is to get those elves to assemble all of the lego bricks into a solid, stable wall. Depending on the temperature range at which you hold the chocolate, these bricks get assembled in different ways. Lower the temperature too rapidly and you'll end up forming very unstable crystals, creating chocolate that doesn't firm up properly and has a dull appearance.

If you want to get into more nitty gritty details, chocolate crystals form into six distinct shapes Forms I through VI , each type of crystal forming and melting at a specific temperature range. Is all this talk of molecules and crystals numbing your brain? Each microwave is unique and affects the chocolate differently so please monitor closely. When only small lumps remain, remove and continue to stir until complete melting. The maximum number of products that can be compared is 4.

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