General Tempering Question

What is going on with my temper? When my dark chocolate sets up, it has great snap and is shiny yet I have swirls on chocolate as if I heated the chocolate too high and it's the cacao butter separating. I didn't let the temperer get above 112. I also get some spots that look like a popped bubble. It doesn't appear to be bloomed. It will not degrade or turn gray over the ext few weeks but it's not the shiny, perfect temper I'm looking for. Help anyone?

Tags: Temper, bloom, swirls

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Permalink Reply by Brian Donaghy on January 5, 2010 at 9:03am

Bud.

I'm with Brad on this one - your melt temp is borderline and is probably not at that temperature through the entire mass and so when you put the rest of the mass in temper, some of its not. And it sounds like it's not sugar bloom so isn't an ambient temperature or humidity issue.

brian

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Permalink Reply by Bud Stockwell on January 4, 2010 at 5:29pm

It stays put and does not wipe off.

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Permalink Reply by Brad Churchill on January 4, 2010 at 8:10pm

Assuming you're talking about the swirl, that's correct. It's chocolate that has bloomed (ie it has set with the wrong form of crystal). It won't wipe off. You will need to remelt and remold it.

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Permalink Reply by Mike on January 21, 2010 at 3:14pm

Brian, i have been battling with tempering and cooling, and i noticed yesterday that the blotch i've been getting on every bar, on the side touching the mold CAN be wiped off. Perhaps you can shed some light on my problem and a possible solution?

After a full day of tempering and molding under all sorts of different conditions, i suspected that maybe there was too much residual cocoa butter in my molds and that was causing the problem (even though i clean them out with cotton balls before use), so i washed one with soap for the first time to test my hypothesis today. (by the way, i'm using a revolation x as of yesterday, but was getting this when i'd temper by hand prior to this)

thanks in advance
-mike

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Permalink Reply by Bud Stockwell on January 7, 2010 at 12:11pm

I want to thank you all for your kind posts.
To recap, my problem is a mild case of bloom caused by my not heating the chocolate high enough to melt out all of the seed. I'll also add more seed as I have been adding about 20% when I hit 95 degrees. Even though I use a temperer that is always stirring the mass of chocolate, I should still stir more by hand to ensure even temperature distribution. I might also lean to letting it over-crystallize a bit. I have also been adding up to 20% more melted chocolate when at 95 degrees to my tempered chocolate when I was running low. Now I'll let it cool a bit more so the temperatures are closer. And stir, stir, stir.
Again, thanks. It's great finding a community of fellow chocolatiers who are so kind and open to helping.
Yours,
Bud

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Permalink Reply by Tami Rose Goodwin on October 9, 2010 at 2:49pm

I just happened on this discussion and was wondering if your problem was ever resolved. I have been tempering my chocolate the same way in a Rev 2 for a couple of months and suddenly I getting this weird bloom that I've never had before. The chocolate sets up okay when I test it, but then about an hour after I have dipped all my centers, they look awful with a grayish hue and spotted look to them. I am very frustrated and perplexed. Did you figure out what your problem was?

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Permalink Reply by Bud Stockwell on October 11, 2010 at 4:29pm

I think it may have been a couple of issues. One reason was that as I dipped different centers, the ganache would slightly melt and what I would have was not pure chocolate but different fats (cream, nuts, etc.) I solved this by starting with fresh chocolate each time. I would use the leftover for my new ganache. (The technique that I use for making a ganache is to temper my chocolate and mix that with my cream/invert sugar that has boiled and let cool to 95 degrees. I then add my butter and tempered chocolate together. That way the ganache sets up much quicker and is much firmer. I'm told that under a microscope, my ganache would look more tempered than one using the method of pouring the boiling cream over the tempered chocolate. But I digress.
So that was one issue. The other was messing around with my temperatures. I had changed my coveratures around the time I bought the machine and needed to find the right custom temperature settings for the combination's of chocolate that I was using. I hope this helped.
Bud