Level: Novice
Read Time: 8 minutes
Tempering silk butter is the bomb. I buy it from you every year but I wish it didn’t cost so much as it does. Couldn’t you invent something to make it cheaper?
Here we are coming into the home stretch of the Iron Triangle (of Anguish) and the chocolate making process. And really, we are done with the chocolate making process but tempering (and running a chocolate business) are integral to so many of you I’ve decided to tackle them.
Unlike last time, the options here are not that bad....as long as you accept the Iron Triangle exists and that there will still be tradeoffs.
Tempering is mostly a simple process but the devil is in the details as they say. Your goal is to take chocolate with no special crystal structure and give it structure so it has that hard snap, smooth mouthfeel and nice gloss. There are a few methods and each come with their pros and cons. Generally speaking, the more you need to temper and the more perfect you want your final chocolate, the more you are going to have to trade money for effort. There are a couple other tradeoffs in there too and I’ll address those as we go along.
Read All The Articles In This Series:
The Iron Triangle Of Anguish (ATA #310)
All about Cocoa Beans (ATA # 311)
Only a Drum, Motor and Some Heat (ATA 312)
Cracking and Winnowing in baby steps (ATA 313)
Melangers et al (ATA 314)
Tempering (ATA 315)
For 90% of you, your batch size is probably 2-4 lb. That gives you a number of pretty simple, and yay, inexpensive options.
Let’s start off with the really sexy table top method where you don’t use a thermometer, you go by feel because you have been doing it for years, and you are not doing a large amount.
Triangle Result: High Labor - High Skill - Low cost.
It can also be quite messy, is prone to failure if you haven’t failed a bunch in the past (this is called learning) and it is pretty hard to scale up.
Next up is the classic bowl method of cooling off a portion of your chocolate to form a bunch of crystals (Types III-V for you chocolate nerds out there) and then adding warmer chocolate to it to melt everything but type V and pouring it up into a mold and letting it set up. All you need are a couple bowls, a good thermometer and some molds. The trade off here is that it is all manual labor, it can be kind of messy, you can’t skimp too much on the thermometer (yep, even there you get what you pay for) and if you mess up the temperatures you have to start over (with tempering, not chocolate making - bloomed chocolate isn’t ruined. Here you have traded off a ton of skill for a little equipment, the need to learn a couple skills but your chance of success goes up.
Triangle result: moderate labor - moderate skill/knowledge - pretty low cost- moderate chance of failure at first.
At this point a lot of people get frustrated with the mess and failure and look at leaning into the Iron Triangle for some trade offs. Up until a few years ago (foreshadowing there) the only real option was to get a tempering machine. Their big issue is $$. Even the cheapest can be many hundreds of dollars and when they aren’t hundreds of dollars they have a very tiny capacity that usually isn’t attractive to home (or business) chocolate makers who make pounds at a time.
A few years ago, in response to this issue I looked into making two different Chocolate Alchemy brand tempering machines. They are still around here somewhere. They worked even...kind of. But here was the thing. Once all was said and done, and I looked at production costs, profit, labor, etc, and what do you know? They ended up costing as much or more than the ones available. TANSTAAFL and the Iron Triangle strike again.
Triangle result: Lower labor - Lower skill - Much higher cost
If you are going into business, it quickly gets to a point that high labor just isn’t a viable option. You simply must have a tempering machine and then the question becomes how competent is your workforce vs how much are you going to spend on equipment.
I’ve seen both of these in action. Lillie Belle Chocolates runs a pretty large volume of chocolates. They do bars, enrobbed, molded and other really cool and beautiful creations and only use a couple very basic (but large) tempering machines...but really know what the hell they are doing. Experience trades for $$.
On the other side, and I’m not going to mention names, there are makers out there hiring folks with little experience (no slight there intended) who have had to get very expensive, push button, basically foolproof tempering machines and it goes the other way where $$$$ trades for experience.
And that really is all I have to say about scaling up and I’m going to roll onward to other options that are now available at home.
A few years ago a machine came out called the EZ Temper and it allowed you to make very easily a few ounces of something called cocoa butter seed over 24 hours. It made tempering really easy. You would melt your chocolate to about 92-93 F, stir in 1-2% of this specially tempered cocoa butter and pour up your chocolate. The trade offs were speed and money. As I mentioned it took about 24 hours to make the seed and only make a few ounces. Neither of those things are really a problem if you can plan ahead. The issue was they were around $1000. You trade one piece of expensive equipment for another and doesn’t really solve a problem.....
Triangle Result: High price - Low knowledge - lower failure rate - not scalable
...except it provided the stepping stone to where we are now with Cocoa butter Silk. We offer it for sale and offer instructions to you can make your own, both in larger quantities (we make it in 12 lb batches) and for less money with any number of pretty inexpensive sous vides.
For me this is a real winning solution.
Triangle Result: Moderate price - Low knowledge - Low failure rate - scalable
Silk’s only real issue is scaling but for small home batches is seems to be the Goldilock’s solution to balancing price vs success.
I told you. It is not real hard this time. Oh, but I almost forgot the question.
Tempering silk butter is the bomb. I buy it from you every year but I wish it didn’t cost so much as it does. Couldn’t you invent something to make it cheaper?
I want to caution you about thinking you have found the solution no one else has. I’ve responded dozens of times about this or that melter that is 1/10 the cost of a tempering machine or this cheap stirring thermometer. Usually what you are giving up with cheap machines and gadgets is accuracy and precision, something that is critical for tempering and one of the BIG reasons why tempering machines cost what they do.
Say it with me.
You cannot beat the Iron Triangle of Anguish.
Good.
Ok, one last thing that although isn’t tempering is related. Molds.
Molds basically come in 3 flavors. Cheap/Hobby, Commercial or semi rigid and Professional.
In short you are going to get what you pay for....or what you need.
Hobby molds are going to be just fine, mostly, if you are making chocolate here and there, you are not using them much and don’t mind replacing them after a few dozen uses. They are going to flex, and sometimes are awkward to use. Such comes with a $3-4 mold.
Triangle Result: Cheap - not durable - fussy to use
Commercial molds are more rigid. That rigidity comes with making them easier to work with and they will last almost forever. What is their issue? They flex a tiny amount when the chocolate tempers and shrinks and the chocolate pulls away and you get what is called release marks. Those marks are the trade off for not being Professional. Expect these to be $15-20.
Triangle Result: Affordable - Durable - Release marks/ not Professional results
Professional molds are very thick, and totally rigid and with that comes both a hefty price tag and zero flex resulting in very professional looking product. These can easily be $50-100 each but will last a lifetime.
Triangle Result: Expensive - Durable - Professional results
The final thing I’ll say about molds is they are not strictly needed at home and you can lay down a piece of parchment paper on a baking sheet, pour up your chocolate and break it up into bark when done. Cheap, simple and gets the job done albeit at the expense of fancy presentation.
Please feel free to drop me an email or here in the comments if there is something you think I’ve missed or want to hear about as we wrap this up next time when we talk about running your own chocolate business.