Let Chocolate Tempering Machines Do the Work for You
December 8th, 2009
Even though you’ll try to resist chocolates, such irresistible qualities as the chocolate has–fine, crisp, silkiness, luster, and creaminess–will make you cave in to its allure. And there are three types to choose from:
- Semi-sweet, dark or unsweetened chocolates, which have cocoa butter, chocolate liquor and very limited quantity of sugar as well as vanilla, depending on secret formulas. Some commercial chocolate makers add more cocoa solids to make the chocolates more bitter.
- Milk chocolates have cocoa butter and chocolate liquor, with extra milk.
- White chocolate, which has vanilla and sugar and cocoa butter, but no cocoa liquor so sometimes they are not considered “real” chocolates.
Tempering accords heat resistance, smoothness, shine and crispness to chocolates and prevents the major problem of blooming that causes dullness and flakiness.
Tempering by hand is a tough task and it involves three steps–heating, cooling and reheating–for which you need a double boiler or an electric skillet. For maintaining specific temperatures, you need a good thermometer (digital is better), and for working on the chocolates, you need a rubber spatula.
But in addition to all these, what you need is patience to maintain the right temperatures accurately during tempering, dipping and molding since even small deviations will spoil the chocolates. To prevent fats-separation, you need to avoid over-mixing and to produce more type V crystals, don’t under-mix.
Affordable counter-top machines are for production of small quantities; if you use tempering machines, you get high-quality chocolates consistently since everything is automated. Your decision to buy a tempering machine will be based upon how many persons will operate the machine for how many hours daily and your fund allocation.
ChocoVision’s Revolation 1 with the ability to work 1.5 pounds at a time with separate settings for various types of chocolates is a good option for learners and small manufacturers.
An ACMC Tabletop Temperer that works quietly with a digital thermometer set up is good for continuous production. This can handle 6 pounds per hour, has a removable 5 quart stainless steel bowl and a couple of 100-watt lamps for generating heat. Its front control panels and digital displays help you in monitoring temperatures and operations.
Revolation 2 and Rev 1 are similar in capacity, dimension and other basic features but those who have a broader experience in chocolate candy making will find the Rev 2 suitable. An adjustable digital thermometer display, an overnight standby mode for keeping the temper during the next day and process-pausing option are additional features in Rev 2.
You can temper up to 10 pounds of chocolates per hour with Revolation x3210 and it has a stainless steel body, pausing option and overnight standby mode.
