How to Temper Chocolate

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Time to learn how to temper chocolate at home. Tempering chocolate may sound like a complicated process, but it really isn’t. And when done correctly, it is a great way to show off and preserve your chocolate treats so they can stay out at room temperature without getting super soft or melting. Melt in your mouth and not in your hands, right?

Ingredients and Tools

To temper chocolate at home, you just need 1 ingredient:

• Chocolate – Tempering broken up chocolate bars or chocolate wafers is ideal over chocolate chips. Chocolate chips have additives in them to help them keep their shape, BUT you can still temper chocolate chips as I will show here. But regardless of what type of chocolate you temper, the process will be the same.

Tools/Equipment

• Thermometer
• Metal or Pyrex bowls
• Pot
• Molds for the chocolate
• Spatula

Why do I need to temper chocolate?

To be honest, you don’t need to temper chocolate, especially if you plan on storing your chocolate bars or chocolate creations in the fridge. However, tempering is done to achieve that glossy finish to the chocolate that has a nice snap when you break it. It also helps it set properly so it won’t melt or get really soft at room temperature. When you buy chocolate at the store, it comes tempered. Once you melt it, you need to temper it again.

How to Temper Chocolate

Here are the steps for how to temper chocolate at home:

Separate the chocolate chips or chocolate chunks into two bowls. Put two-thirds of it in one bowl and the other third in another bowl. Now it is time to melt the chocolate. This can be done in a few ways, the traditional way is to use the double boiler method. For this, you need a Pyrex or metal bowl; a ceramic bowl will work too. Fill a pot with 1 inch of water and place it on a burner, and set the heat to medium-high.

Add the bowl with two-thirds of the chocolate on top of the pot and make sure the bottom of the bowl is not touching the top of the water. Now, as the water heats up, the steam will hit the bottom of the bowl and warm it, and gently melt the chocolate.

Keep stirring the chocolate until it melts completely and gets heated to the proper temperature. Refer to this Tempering Guide for all the correct temperatures:

In this case, I am melting milk chocolate chips, so I need to heat the chocolate to between 110 and 113°F or 43 to 45 °C.

Once you get to that point, remove the chocolate from the heat, and now you need to cool it down to a specific temperature. Refer to the above guide once again.

In this case, since I melted milk chocolate, I need to cool the chocolate to between 80 and 82°F. You can do this with the “seeding method,” which is what I am going to show or also with the tabling method which is very common.

The seeding method

Add the 1/3 of chocolate chips, which were separated, to the melted bowl of chocolate and then stir and stir and stir until the chocolate chips or chocolate chunks melt. This will cool down the chocolate. Keep stirring until all the chocolate chips are incorporated and the temperature reaches 80 to 82°F. You can also rest the bowl inside a larger bowl with ice on the bottom.

The chocolate will also get shinier as you stir it. Now, once it reaches the proper temperature, bring it back to the heat and heat it back up to 86°F, which is the working temperature for milk chocolate. The chocolate is tempered and ready to go.

The Tabling Method for Tempering Chocolate

The tabling method is a very common method for bringing the temperature of the melted chocolate down to the correct temperature. What you do is pour the melted chocolate out onto a “table” or countertop made of Quartz or Marble. Those two types seem to work the best.

Then, using a bench scraper in each hand, you will scrape and move the chocolate back and forth across the cool surface and onto itself, which will cool the chocolate. Bring it down to the proper temperature, then heat it back up to the proper working temperature.

Molding the tempered chocolate or using it however you need it

Now the chocolate is tempered and ready to be worked with however you want. You can pour it into a candy bar mold and then give the mold a few taps to release any air bubbles. Then allow it to set at room temperature or you can speed up the process by putting it in the fridge for about 30 minutes.

You can also use the tempered chocolate for other treats like these homemade peanut butter cups, Dubai chocolate bar, homemade Snickers, homemade Twix bars, etc.

Once the chocolate has set, you can remove it from its mold. When properly tempered, the chocolate will have a nice shine to it instead of being really dull-looking, and it will have a nice snap to it when broken.

How long does tempered chocolate last?

Once tempered, it will last for several months if stored in a cool, dry place, like a pantry. Avoid storing it in the fridge because the moisture can affect it.