Like many of you I reached for an old favorite when Valentine’s Day rolled around a few weeks back – Chocolate Covered Strawberries.
What a delicious gift; they’re damned tasty, beautiful to look at, easy (in the big scheme of things) to do, and ridiculously more affordable – and fresher – than buying them commercially around the holiday. And though some might argue, you’ll get far better, more consistent results by tempering your chocolate before dipping every time.
After a bit of trial and error (more error initially), online research, and pestering my chef friends (thanks again Libby!), we’ve evolved to the following routine for a quick, easy temper of good chocolate for dipping, using a combination of the classic techniques and one newer trick at the end.
While some might suggest that you need to chop your chocolate down into tiny pieces, I’ve found that a fairly rough chop is all that is needed to get thing started. Most experts suggest that you need a critical mass of chocolate to really get a good temper, you’ll often see amounts mentioned anywhere from 12 ounces to a pound and half at minimum.
I started this batch using a pound and half total, with roughly 2/3’s of that dropped into a stainless bowl to place over simmering water on the stove. With your chocolate chopped fairly small, this first melt happens reasonably quickly. It’s important to note that you don’t want your chocolate to reach a temperature warmer than 125 F, some even suggest 115 is enough to consider the mass fully melted and ready for the next step in tempering.
As pictured above, the next step involves removing the molten chocolate form the heat, stirring in the remaining chopped (and unmelted) chocolate until fully melted, and letting your chocolate cool to 81 F. This process of adding unmelted chocolate serves to both cool the heated mass and “seed” the formation of well-aligned chocolate crystals that give solid chocolate its stability and sheen.
Once the seed chocolate you’ve added has fully melted and the molten chocolate has cooled to 81 F, it’s time to reheat the chocolate back to 90 F to complete the tempering process.
We’ve taken to using a water bath and immersion circulator to do that now, for three reasons. One, it’s damned precise – I can set the water bath up ahead of time and have it ready and spot on the mark temp-wise when it’s time to reheat the chocolate.
Second, this is easier than going back to the double boiler, and third, and probably most importantly, using the water bath makes it super-easy to take your time dipping or coating your fruit, as you can hold the chocolate at 90F (in theory) indefinitely so you don’t have to rush to dip / coat fruit (or whatever) before your chocolate cools and sets up.
As always, the tempering process produced silky smooth, beautiful dipped strawberries this time around. Tuck this one away for the next time you need tempered chocolate for a special occasion.
Enjoy.
