Why are my tempered chocolate shells cracking?

The Alchemist answers some common questions about using and making Cocoa Butter Silk.

After such a long and in depth viscosity discussion last week, I think we all deserve a simple speed round of Q and A.

Imagine you have a big, thick, gooey slime. Now, if you try to push your hand through the slime, it resists and feels sticky. That’s because the slime doesn’t like to move quickly when you apply force to it. We call this “viscosity.”

Tempering silk butter is the bomb.

What an interesting set of questions I’ve been receiving this last year. Well, I am using the term interesting in sort of a gently sarcastic way. I find them interesting because

Think of this as the start of a FAQ. I also want to note there are some oddly phrased questions below and I’m leaving them as written, not to make fun of anyone as it is pretty obvious they are from folks who do not speak English as their first language and being monolingual myself, I applaud them for writing in. Their English is worlds better than my Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin or Italian.

After last weeks in depth conversation about roasting cocoa in a coffee roaster, I wanted to, nay, needed to take it a little easy this week. There are a bunch of pretty simple questions that don’t really merit a full long winded response but in that there are no stupid questions (that is NOT a challenge folks) I still want to answer them. It also helps clear a little of the back log.

Sometimes when I break a piece of chocolate, I see white spots inside which I think is little pieces of silk which hasn't melted.

I was told that here are my tempering options:

• Cocoa Butter

• Cocoa Silk

• Powdered Cocoa Butter/Silk

Well, now that we have a good and prominent link up showing how to submit questions to me (hangs head in shame) so many are coming in it seems a good time for a pretty simple speed round

This is going to be a little rambling with a little of this and a little of that. I’ll get to the Ask the Alchemist after a couple announcements.

I wrote an article yesterday. It was kind of a venting rant session for me. Call it therapy. But I started having doubts that I might be just railing at the world and it wasn’t useful or delivered the message I wanted.

Hello! I'm wondering your thoughts on COVID-19 and chocolate tempering preparation. From what I can read, 140 degrees is the safest temperature for food prep to kill viruses, but we don't want that for melting chocolate. any thoughts on food safety?

With the cool weather coming in Cocoa Butter Silk is back in stock. Come and get it!!

I use my Sous Vide for so many things and am planning on making silk. My question is however have you tempered chocolate using a sous vide

Hi John! I apologize if I am inquiring at the wrong time; I'm not sure who is managing emails right now. I hope all is well and you are having a nice recovery! If you are able to reply, I had a few questions.

How do I maintain a large batch of chocolate at 92-93° while pouring multiple molds? Can it drop below that and still maintain the temper?

I have a question about tempering which answer I can’t find anywhere and I’m hoping you can help.  Simply, why are the tempering temperatures have to be different for dark, milk and white chocolate?  Is it because of the greater amount of cocoa butter in the milk and white chocolates?