Resources & Techniques

In liquifying chocolate, it is the cocoa butter, the fat, that is actually getting melted – changing from solid to liquid state. Because of the triglyceride composition of cocoa butter, it melts over a temperature range (~90-120°F), not just one single point. This is what makes chocolate so palatable, and for this reason melting is in important part of handling and tempering chocolate.

A shiny pourable mixture usually consisting of water, sugar, glucose,cocoa powder, gelatin, and couverture. used to create a visually pleasing appearance as well as helping extend the shelf life of the dessert.

The process of turning melted chocolate into a solid mass of stable cocoa butter crystals with a fine, even grained texture, accomplished with controlled cooling of the chocolate with agitation, to form many fine-grained beta crystals, as opposed to other crystal forms which are unstable and of random formation. 

A process to pre-crystallize chocolate by inoculating melted chocolate with beta form-V crystals from previously tempered, pre-crystallized chocolate.