On hold (a week or so) while we finish up taxes, inventory, reports, paperwork and all that other stuff behind the scenes.

If you have already tempered chocolate and only want to mold or work with it, seeding might be the way for you to go. It would go like this.

1) Divide your tempered solid chocolate you want to use into two portions 75%/25%.
2) Melt the 75% portion. Don’t fret at all about the temperature.
3) Let it cool until it is 90 F.
4) At 90 F, put in the remaining 25%.
5) Stir occasionally until melted.

Done! The 25% reserved will assure you maintain temper. And you
don’t have to worry about getting the original chocolate too hot
since you will add tempered chocolate.

Don’t get hung up on names. I have tasted terrible Criollo and wonderful Forastero. Read, taste and make up your own mind.

Relax, don’t worry. Enjoy some homemade Chocolate!

You can eat your chocolate immediately but it will generally benefit from a slight ageing, maturation or resting period. A week to a month is about right.

After you chocolate is set up in the molds, just invert them and tap lightly on the counter. The chocolate pieces should drop out. A nice gloss indicates a good temper.

There is a constant debate whether you let your chocolate set up at room temperature or in a refrigerator. Either will tend to work under the right circumstances. If you are remolding chocolate that was previously tempered, refrigeration works well. If you are tempering from scratch, I like room temperature set up as it gives more time for the proper type V (hard) crystals to grow.

After you have molded your chocolate, but before it is set up, give the molds a few good solids raps on the counter. You want to dislodge any air and get it to the surface so your finished chocolate doesn’t have air pockets.

Once your chocolate is in the melted tempered form at around 85 F, you can pour/deposit/fill whatever molds you wish.

Here is tempering in a nutshell. The hardest, glossiest chocolate has cocoa butter in a high melting form (crystal). You get this form by either by adding it (seeding) or making it (letting the chocolate cool naturally). In either case, after your cocoa butter has the crystal you want, you heat it above the melting point of the other crystals leaving only what you want. When it cools again, that form predominats and you have hard, glossy, tempered chocolate.

That’s it.