How to Temper Chocolate

Hey guys! Today was yet another fun filled day of chocolate, truffles and packaging! I can't believe how fast this weekend is coming! I totally just released the tension by shopping. Yeah, and I spent a lot too. Uh, don't tell Ben, OK? It's just that I was browsing through the baking books on Amazon, and happened to come across a whole section of cookie decorating books (which happen to be my weakness!). I get to make and decorate tons of things for the holidays at the bakery, and new ideas are never a bad thing! Have I convinced you yet? Yeah, I convinced me too! Awesome! I hope they get here soon!!! I'll be sure to show you when they do!

Oh Here's something else I wanted to show you! There was this rain storm a few days ago, and when I got up super early for work this is what I saw!It was a whole rainbow, too! So beautiful!

Awesome, right?!

Oh, right, and speaking of holiday treats, I have decided to go ahead with my candy posts for the holidays!  This will be the first of my series of candy posts! I've been making tons of different things for the Christmas craft fair, and I love to include candy with the cookies plates I give to friends for holiday presents.

Tempering chocolate is a very important and basic skill. You can do TONS of stuff with tempered chocolate! You really need a candy thermometer to do this, as tempering requires some rather specific temperatures. This is not something to be intimidated by, it just takes a little precision and time. You can do it!

Because I knew I would be making a lot of stuff, I bought a huge bar of chocolate! You want to choose a good brand. Something that is totally delicious all by itself.

I'm in love! I was almost sad to open it's perfect wrapper, but it was worth it! I also prefer dark chocolate, but you could use milk chocolate if you really wanted to. This also works for white chocolate. These are the instructions we were given in culinary school, written by Cathy Burgett, our teacher. Ready? Here we go!

To temper 1 1/2 pounds of chocolate:
-Chop the chocolate very fine, and place two thirds of it in a metal bowl. Bring a pot of water to a simmer, remove it from the heat and place the bowl of chocolate over the water. The bottom of the bowl should not touch the surface of the water or the chocolate will overheat. Stir the chocolate frequently as it is melting. Take the chocolate's temperature occasionally to make sure that it does not exceed 125*. If it looks like it might be getting too hot, take the bowl off the water bath, and keep stirring to complete the melting.

-Remove the bowl from the water bath when the chocolate has melted. Dry the bottom of the bowl. Stir in the remaining third of chocolate, a little at a time until the temperature comes down to 87* to 91* for bittersweet or semisweet chocolates, or 84* to 88* for milk or white chocolates.

-The chocolate can drop down as low as 71*, but then must be reheated repeatedly over the pan of hot water for no more than 2-3 seconds at a time until it comes back up to 87*-91*(bittersweet or semisweet) or 84*-88* (milk or white).

 If the chocolate cools down below 71* you must start over. If upon reheating the chocolate the temperature rises above 91* for darks, or 88* for white or milk, the chocolate goes out of temper and you must start over. When the chocolate is in the ideal temperature range it is in a good state of temper and can be used for molding, coating, rolling and decorations.

I used my tempered chocolate to make truffles in molds, for chocolate coffee bark, and to coat things like turtles, peppermint patties, and caramels. It also went on English toffee! When Chocolate is properly tempered it should appear very glossy and smooth, and have a good hard snap to it when you break it. Chocolate that is out of temper it will "bloom", or have  the cocoa butter rise to the surface and create a milky film on top, looking cloudy. It will also be softer, lacking the nice snap of tempered chocolate.

See? Super shiny! And we all know that I like shiny things! I hope you guys get a chance to try this out for the holidays, and create something beautiful, and delicious! More candy posts will follow, and I'll be referring back to this post. There will be lots of good ideas for using tempered chocolate! I bet you can think of some too!

Tomorrow is my early shift at work. On Wednesdays I ride my bike about 3 1/2 miles to Magic lake (above picture), and then I meet my friend/boss Nora and we walk the last 3 miles together. We get to go on the "Heart Trail", which takes us up and down quite a few nasty little hills, but with moss, trees, leaves, ferns and mushrooms as our scenery. Not too shabby! Check out the steam that was rising last week! Cool!

Guess I had better go to bed soonish. G'night all!

Potato Salad and Rainbows

Yesterday B's grandparents arrived from California for a visit. We are so happy to see them, as it's been a whole year since their last appearance on Pender. Their imminent arrival triggered quite the flurry of action in the kitchen yesterday morning, and a shopping trip, which resulted in a barely closing refrigerator. My contribution was a spur of the moment potato salad.

I plowed through our cupboards and refrigerator shelves for things that sounded like they'd be good in a potato salad, and here's what I came up with.

I think I also ended up adding some plain dijon, salt and some lemon pepper. I like to mostly use plain yogurt as the base for my dressing, with a bit of the mayo for flavor. I added the mustards, lemon juice, vinegar, dill relish, shopped celery, lemon pepper, and salt, all to make a kind of dressing slurry. I chopped and boiled the potatoes, and made some hard boiled eggs.

I started out coating the potatoes with the dressing, just to make sure there was enough. There wasn't. I kept adding dollops of yogurt and dijon until it looked moist enough. I peeled and sliced the eggs and tossed them in (be gentle with them so they don't crumble into nothingness while mixing!), then tasted it. Hmm, needed more seasoning. Salt, lemon pepper and dill plus a little lemon juice went it. Stir, taste...YUM! I realize i didn't give you any measurements, but it all depends on how much you're making, and how moist you like it, as well as how strongly flavored. Just keep messing with it until it works.

A double yolker!

I know, not the prettiest ever, but it sure tasted good!

While I was cooking i had my own light show, thanks to this baby. Such a cool little thing!

It has a solar powered motor that rotates the hanging crystal, throwing rotating rainbows all over the place! So pretty.

After getting settled and visiting a bit with our company we all sat down at the table for some great food. B BBQ'd some beef, the in-law's steamed some broccoli, we set out my potato salad, and i sliced up some watermelon. To top it all off we had some of the wine that my FIL made at his wine shop. Good times!

Right after dinner B and I had to leave for work, which was a looong shift as we were preparing the bakery for the weekend. We weren't done until 5:30am! On our way home we stopped off at Medicine Beach to admire the glassy water and soft lighting. The perfect way to end a long work week!

We took a quick hike up the hill, it was worth it!

Beautiful!
Happy weekend!