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For professional chocolatiers, tempering is an important aspect of their chocolate candy making business. This is because chocolate only become lustrous, creamy, and all-around delectable through tempering, a phased process of heating and cooling done to make chocolate pliant to shaping and molding.

Chocolates by nature are prone to blooming, that phenomenon which causes the crystals found in cocoa butter to escape the refinement of conching and therefore rise to the surface to mar your chocolate presentation. Blotchiness and a flaky consistency also result from blooming, all of which are signs of an inferior-quality chocolate confection.

There is a rationale behind chocolate’s predisposition to bloom. To begin with, the cocoa butter in chocolate–if tempering is slapdash–can produce six different types of crystals. Be aware that what you want during tempering is the proliferation of Type V crystal, the one that imparts a lustrous shine, a velvety richness, and a crisp snap to chocolate candy bars. To obtain only the Type Vs during crystallization, temperatures must be controlled.

Dark, semi-sweet and white chocolates have different tempering temperatures. When you dictate and sustain temperature levels, then you’ll be more successful in producing Type V crystals. Get distracted by the fun of innovating on chocolate shapes while working and temperatures may change. Be advised that any shift in thermometer readings on your chocolate will result in distempered chocolates. That means you’ll have to redo tempering; something which you’ll do frequently if you get distracted often.

Chocolate tempering machines, as opposed to tempering by hand, will automate the tempering process for you. A computer chip within its system has been so-designed as to turn a painstaking process for you as simple as setting dials and pushing buttons. Once you’ve loaded the chocolate onto the tempering machine, you can forget it–even all night–so you can take the time to perfect your chocolate design.

Manual tempering, as you’ve probably found out by now, isn’t only a matter of perfecting techniques but also reigning in such other factors as moisture, equipment reliability, worker skill, and focus–elements that are too often way beyond your control.

If you’re really bent on making a success out of your chocolate candy making enterprise, you’ll fare well to prioritize a chocolate tempering machine in your capital outlay. This compact gadget will not only ensure that you produce consistent-quality products all the time in a timely manner, it’ll also liberate your time to focusing on such business essentials as innovation, profits, productivity, and sales strategies. Essential aspects to business success, all of them, should you ask.