Tempering Chocolate

My plan was to temper chocolate and dip cream caramels in it. Tempering chocolate turns out to be a pain. I worked in it last night until past minute and failed in two attempts. I did more research today - and I think that last night I put the "seed chocolate" in at too high a temperature - and it melted before if could do any seeding. And then - I only took the temp. down to 88 - 91. THis was not cool enough according to other methods I read today.

So, now I am trying again - I remelted the chocolate from last night (over a double boilier - heat off - after simmering lightly) the melted chocolate got up to about 118 and is in the process of cooling to 80. I plan to ring it up to 89 using a bowl of warm water.

For cooling it, I transferred the melted chocolate into the bowl of a stand mixer, and stirring with the dough hook on the lowest setting - that way I don't have to stand there and stir it fo half an hour as it cools. Off to check the temp... 86.4 and cooling.

The tempering directions I am following now are here:

Double Boiler Tempering

Chop chocolate blocks into small pieces or use chocolate wafers.

Fill bottom of double boiler so the hot water does not touch the bottom of the upper pan. Do not let the water boil. Stir the chocolate while melting to ensure even heating. Try to avoid creating air bubbles. Heat chocolate to 120 F. to 122 F.

Replace the hot water with 70 F. water, no cooler. Stir until the chocolate cools to between 79 F. and 80 F. It may occasionally be necessary to add additional cool water to the bottom of the double boiler.

Now replace the 70 F. water with warm water (about 92 F. to 93 F.) and raise the temperature of the chocolate to between 88 F. and 89 F. for dark chocolate or 84 F. to 86 F. for milk chocolate or white cocoa butter coating (white chocolate). Maintain the appropriate temperature while dipping. If the chocolate exceeds 90 F., it will be necessary to repeat the tempering process.

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The directions I used last night - which were good - but led me a bit astray about the "seed" method are here: At cookingforengineers.com - which also appears to be a good site.


When the chocolate got down to 80 degrees - I put it over a bowl of 95 degree water and brought it back up to 89. It was still pretty thick - too thick to use effectively - I tried a test strip on some parchment - and after three or four minutes it didn't look like it had tempered propoerly, it was still soft and bent rather than snapping. I added warmer water to the bowl under the chocolate and brought it up a bit more - slightly over 90. At this point, I decided to dip the caramels anyway.

Dipping took about an hour - I kept an eye on the temperature and replace the water in the bowl under the chocolate with warm / hot tap water every now and then. I used wooden skewers to dip the caramels - I think tongs or some other way of grabbing a caramel from two sides might work better. One problem with the caramels is that when they first came out of the freezer, they were too solid to stick a skewer in. After a while, they became too soft to stay on a skewer - so they had to go back in the freezer.

The chocolate must have been in temper - because in the morning, the caramels were shiny and the chocolate broke with a snap. I think I could have doen a better test for tempered-ness by dipping a spoon in the chocolate and putting it in the fridge for a few minutes. The first sign of success I noticed was the dough hook on the mixer - the chocolate it was covered with hardened to a shiny gloss and broke with a snap. Also, the chocolate I worked with stayed tempered for an hour with occasional reheating - sometimes the reheating went to 95 or 98 - this thinned the chocolate enough to work with and did not destroy the temper.