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.