Level: Novice
Reading time: 4 minutes
Have you ever tried tempering chocolate with a Sous Vide?
I tried making cocoa butter silk in the sous vide like you showed. This look right to you? I did not stir. Cool at room temp.
I’m really glad you dove in and tried making your own. I’m going to be writing a full how to article with all the ins and outs, plus troubleshooting, what ifs and variations you can try. In the mean time I’ll just answer questions here.
In short, I can’t tell if you have silk there or not. In the solid form, there is no visual clue whether it worked or not. To be 100% sure you have to test it.
As a reminder, just finely grate up 1% silk and add it to melted chocolate that is at 94 F. Stir it in well and let it set for 1-2 minutes. Give it another stir to make sure the specks of silk are melted and incorporated, and pour it into your prepared molds.
Most likely though, if you followed the directions of putting the cocoa butter into the water bath at 92.5 F AND at the end it had a thick opaque look and texture, then that is the sign it worked.
It should look like this.
You can either stir it or not stir it. It does not really matter. You won’t mess it up by stirring. And really, I prefer stirring it to verify it is smooth and creamy throughout. It is a little chunky I would tend to put it back in the water bath another couple hours, maybe bumping the temperature up 0.2 F.
Nice and simple today.
Happy tempering.