Tempering in the summer -
the best tips!
There is no reason to put
playing with chocolate on hold during the summer. With these simple tips, it is
possible to continue creating beautiful, colourful chocolate bonbons with the
perfect snap during the summer months.
1. Adjust the amount of seeding
chocolate
The higher the room
temperature, the greater the amount of seeding chocolate. It is quite natural
that you should add more seeding chocolate when tempering chocolate in summer
than when tempering chocolate in winter. If you don't do this, all the seeding
chocolate will have melted before the temperature of the chocolate reaches the
critical limit (read more about the critical limits for the different
chocolates here:
Chocolate tempering made easy!), and then your chocolate will not
be tempered.
For example, I seed with
approx. 25-26% in the summer, but only with 22-23% in the winter. Keep in mind
that you must add all the seeding chocolate at once to cool the chocolate as
quickly as possible.
2. Work with chocolate in
the morning
Even on the hottest days,
the temperature in the morning will usually be low enough (depending on where you are situated in the world, of course) for you to succeed
both in colouring chocolate moulds and in tempering chocolate. It is most
critical that the temperature is not too high when you have to colour your moulds with coloured cocoa butter -
compared to when you "simply" have to temper chocolate. So I
recommend that you to choose a day with a cold morning (according to the weather forecast) for colouring chocolate moulds, and the you can mould shells etc. on another day where it may not be just as cold.
If you want to know more
about the recommended temperatures for the different parts of the working
process for chocolate bonbons (colouring, moulding, filling, capping and
storage), you can read a lot more about this in "CHOCOLATE BONBONS - a practical guide".
3. Open window at night
A very easy way to lower the
temperature (further) in your kitchen on summer mornings is to leave a kitchen
window slightly open during the night. If necessary, also leave the window open
while you work with the chocolate in your kitchen.
4. Air circulation
If you have to temper chocolate later in the day, when the
sun may have been on your kitchen windows and thus raised the temperature in
your kitchen, 10 minutes of opening several doors and windows to create a lot
of air circulation can do wonders. You can thus - before you start tempering
chocolate - quickly lower the room temperature by a few degrees, simply by circulating the air.
Even if you can only get the temperature lowered from, e.g.
25°C to 23°C, the two degrees make all the difference to how easy it is for you
to achieve a good result with your chocolate tempering.
NB. Always avoid this – both in the summer and the winter
It is ALWAYS a bad idea to have large heat sources running
in the kitchen just before or while you are working with coloured cocoa butter
or tempering chocolate. The heat from an oven can easily cause the
temperature in your kitchen to rise by the few degrees that make the difference
in relation to whether you can e.g. easily decorate chocolate moulds with coloured
cocoa butter, or whether the colours will not set in the moulds in the
beautiful patterns and designs that you have planned.
An electric kettle or a pot that boils also acts very poorly
with working with chocolate. The steam can ruin your tempering completely. So you should also avoid having kettles or pots boiling just before or while you are working with coloured cocoa butter or tempering chocolate.
Do you want to know more?
You will find a very
concise and easy to follow guide to tempering both dark, milk, and white
chocolate right here:
Chocolate
tempering made easy!
If you
would rather have a step-by-step description with all the practical tips and
tricks, as well as how to fix chocolate tempering issues, you will find it in
the e-book "CHOCOLATE
BONBONS - a practical guide".