Blotches and the absence of a smooth and shiny finish on your chocolate candies means proper tempering of the chocolate candies has not been done. Chocolates are not shiny on their own. Though by conching you smoothen particles, it is chocolate tempering that prevents crystal formation.
Good quality chocolates, apart from having a glossy patina, should break cleanly with a snap and must melt like butter in the mouth.
The basic chocolate used for making candies is melted at temperatures more than 90F for dipping and molding. Because of heating, it loses its temper and hence needs retempering. The basic ingredient for chocolate candy is cocoa butter that can be had from grinding roasted cocoa beans.
This cocoa butter has more than 50% of cocoa solids and when tempered, its crystals become suspended with the cocoa solids. Melting separates the crystals from the solids and the crystals rise to the surface.
Correct temperatures should be closely monitored during tempering because cocoa butter has unique crystallization properties. Its fatty acids, when cooled down after melting, re-crystallize into six different forms. Each of the six crystal forms dominates rapidly at a specific temperature. Only Type V of these six gives the shine and snap to the chocolate. Tempering is done to have as many type V crystals as possible.
Tempering is done by heating, cooling and re-heating for producing more of type V crystals and to prevent other crystals forming. Different types of chocolates have different heating and cooling temperature levels. Tempering chocolate by hand is done in two methods namely tabliering and seeding. Tempering by hand should be learned irrespective of the purpose for which you make chocolate candies.
In tabliering or the marble-slab technique, you take about 1 pound of chocolate and cut it into 5 mm strips, ensuring there is no moisture on the chopping board or repository bowl. It is heated on a double boiler to the specific temperature. Pouring the melted chocolate on the marble slab, you should work with a rubber spatula to make it smooth and glossy. Cooling will make it fit for dipping and molding. You should ensure that it does not get hardened or loses its temper.
Seeding is just like tabliering but you use the already tempered chocolate as a “seed” to temper the melted chocolate. The crystal structure of the “seed” chocolate does the “inoculation” on the melted chocolate resulting in type V crystals dominating the crystallization process.The most important point is, temperatures should be closely monitored, preferably with an accurate digital laser thermometer. You should never allow any change in the holding temperature to avoid a repetition of the whole process of tempering.
Tempering by hand is a tedious process because even a minuscule change in the temperature will spoil the results. Both over-mixing and under-mixing must be avoided. Even experienced chocolate manufacturers face problems in chocolate tempering in summer when there is moisture in the workplace due to a humid atmosphere. Good thing there are chocolate tempering machines that take the guesswork out of manual tempering.
Antisanal chocolatiers prefer the method of tabliering for tempering of chocolate candies because of its marketing merits.
