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The attractive appearance and features of chocolates like velvet creaminess, glossiness and crispness are the qualities chocoholics love. The one responsible for these features is tempering, a process of melting, cooling and working with the chocolate until it reaches the right tempering temperatures.

Tempering is also a way to lengthen the shelf life of chocolates. Chocolates that have not been tempered are prone to a condition called blooming. Blooming makes the chocolates flaky, consumers often considers chocolates like these as mediocre.

In tempering, the fat crystals in cocoa butter melt and solidify at different specific temperatures. Chocolatiers have to make the crystals uniform in structure by controlling temperatures.

Chocolate tempering is somewhat precise so when manually done, it’s quite complicated and tedious. If you are new to this process, you’ll probably have many errors before you get it right.

It’s important that you learn about the chemistry involved in tempering chocolates. If tempering is done right, the fatty acids should form type V crystals alone during crystallization. Type V crystals are the ones responsible for the gloss and velvety texture of chocolate. Chocolates are very sensitive to temperature, so you must be aware of the specific temperatures of the different chocolates to be able to temper it properly. Wrong temperature can lose the temper of chocolates and you will have to do the process all over again.

The next things you have to know are the two ways of tempering chocolates manually. The first process will require you to use a marble slab, known as tabliering. This is done by placing the melted chocolate on a marble slab to absorb the heat to a specific temperature. The second technique is known as seeding where non-melted chocolate bits are combined with melted chocolate for the crystals in fatty acids to lead the way in crystallization.

If you usually make chocolates in bulk, you must get yourself a chocolate tempering machine. The machine will be able to provide the proper temperature needed by the chocolates. It can automatically produce type V crystals each time you load your chocolate, so you really don’t have to worry about right chemistry. You can just set the machine on and leave the chocolate; nothing about keeping close watches on temperatures. It can automatically heat, cool and reheat on itself.

This machine is perfect not only when you’re producing large batches of chocolate candies but if you’re always making chocolate candies. Aside from that using a chocolate tempering machine can help you concentrate on chocolate candy making more because you do not have to check your chocolate from time to time.