As you may already know, chocolate don’t really possess creaminess, glossiness and richness by nature; it just goes through the process of tempering to attain these standard features. Even though chocolate goes through conching to turn particles refined, it still needs to be tempered to make the grains even tinier to a level where you can no longer feel it on your tongue.

If you tempered chocolate precisely, such fine attributes that chocolate lovers love such as the firmness, glossiness, smoothness and firmness will be attained. Chocolates that skip the process of tempering are more likely to bloom. This is where whitish-gray spots appear on the face of chocolates, making them unappealing.

Since most chocolatiers focus on enhancing productivity and efficiency, they tend to depend on chocolate tempering machines to facilitate production. The reality is, there will still be incidences where some factors could affect automated tempering and you’ll still have to rely on manual tempering.

One way you could temper your chocolate by hand is through tabliering, otherwise known as the marble-slab technique. This procedure of chocolate tempering is French in origin and it involves spreading on the melted chocolate across a heat-absorbing top, typically a marble slab, until it cools down to its ideally tempered form and texture.

You need to have at hand a pound of chocolate, serrated knife, mixing bowl, chopping board, double boiler and rubber spatula. Cut the chocolate into strips and let it melt in the double boiler slowly, so as to make sure you don’t burn it. Once it’s completely melted, pour half of the melted mixture onto the marble surface and with the spatula, spread it constantly until it turns into a creamy texture. Do the same on the remaining melt until the entire mass is uniform in temperature and texture.

Another way you could temper chocolate manually is through seeding. It has the same materials as in tabliering, the only thing different is in the latter part of the procedure. Get the three fourth parts of the chocolate strips and place it in a double boiler to melt. Once melted, pour chocolate melt in a mixing bowl, and stir in the remaining solid chocolate strips. Gently stir the mixture until it reaches its precise tempered temperature.

It is important that you keep a constant watch over the temperatures of your chocolate. Keep your thermometer ready for action even while you’re dipping and molding chocolate candy as any fluctuations can cause a repeat tempering.

Manual chocolate tempering can really be a tiresome task even if you’ve already mastered it. It can take much of your time, that you’ll have no more room for creativity. If you usually produce a large volume of chocolate candy, having a chocolate tempering machine could really be useful.