Cooking For Engineers

[Dilbert]

if you mean putting the melted / 'hot' chocolate into some egg white -

egg white starts to set up at 140'F and gets completely firm at about 155'F

you can use that for a guideline, but remember as soon as the hot stuff hits the cold stuff, the hot stuff cools off and the cold stuff warms up. bottom line to that is: the chocolate can be warmer than 155'F without cooking the egg whites / creating lumps.

constant stirring / agitation is required, however.

[Nadvida]

how do i harden dipping chocolate that comes purchased in already very close to liquid but not quite yet form? I know with melted chocolate is easy because the chocolate is just going to form back itself once it is cold enough but these dipping sauce are so liquidy that i dont see that happening unless i do another process to it. They are called Walden Farms Chocolate Dip.

[roberthudson]

Do you know how to make or where to obtain low melting point chocolate for use in ice cream? (We're thinking of recreating "Grater's" chocolate chip ice cream)

[Jim Cooley]

Make your own. Coconut oil has a very peculiar and distinct melting point (72º F ?) IIRC. Try adding some of that.


I mean, coconut oil is REALLY strange! Goes from solid to liquid over a couple degrees, or less. Ain't no in-between -- the phase change is total, complete and almost instantaneous.

[SH]

Hi - fantastic responses, have learnt loads as tempering newbie!
My question: I'd like to make a chocolate bar by adding roasted (and cooled) seeds to my tempered chocolate for taste and texture. Will this this interfere with the temper? Any help gratefully received as I've scoured the internet in vain for intelligence on how added ingredients affect temper.

[fridolph]

I have many attempt in doing this but I always failed in tempering chocolate.

[lizt23]

I have been home-dipping chocolates for almost 30 years - mostly marzipan but all sorts of centres, including liquid centres which are incredibly delicate. This method works with everything that can hold its shape in the tempered chocolate.

I start with Callebaut chocolate, with absolutely no wax, paraffin or anything else, this is high-end melt-in-your-mouth luxury, and some of the hardest to temper because you get NO HELP from the chocolate itself. I chop it into small chunks and melt it very gently in the microwave, on about 4-5 power, stirring often, until it's barely melted - just warm, never hot. It's really easy to burn and takes a LONG time to temper if it's too warm.

Then temper by stirring gently and pretty constantly with a silicone spatula. Once it starts to feel cool-ish, test by dabbing a bit onto wax paper. It's ready when this dab hardens shiny and snaps in 3 minutes or less of sitting on the wax paper. The process takes time and patience, but it works. I think of it as super-cooling the chocolate: essentially keeping it liquid by stirring as it cools below its usual hardening temperature. This does not contradict the "seed" idea, it complements it: the "seed crystals" are forming as you super-cool the mass, but they don't have a chance to coalesce because of the stirring. Thus, the chocolate stays liquid. Then, it hardens super-fast after dipping, and you get a nice shiny surface because nothing has a chance to separate while the hardening happens.

So, once it's tempered I pour some (the part I'm going to use immediately) into a Pyrex baking dish, maybe 2-3 inches deep - this is my dipping bowl - the rest goes into the oven with the light on (oven is off, just the light is on). The part in the oven stays just barely warm enough to be melted.

Back to the dipping bowl:as I am dipping the chocolates, I add some from the oven whenever the chocolate in the dipping bowl gets too low (or too thick). I stir to mix and re-temper (this goes pretty fast - usually around 3-5 minutes because it's so close to the right temperature already) and keep dipping. I have found that keeping the extra in the oven saves scads of time!

It sounds a bit tedious and time-consuming, but it gets faster as you get good at it, and it's by far the most foolproof method I've found in almost 30 years of home-dipping without a tempering machine. I do a few hundred chocolates each year for Christmas and usually get them all done in a single day.

so.. I hope this helps someone... happy dipping (and tempering!)

[CarolynMaes]

nice