Hi All. Greetings from Indonesia. I came across this forum while searching for the best method for a starter to temper chocolate, and the discussions here have opened my horizon.
I am a beginner and have been trying to come up with healthy snacks to feed the family. Oddly enough, I have successfully made fruit-based snacks tempered with dark chocolate that has tested well with my wife and our kids. In light of this small success, I am considering starting a side business selling these snacks. I have been ok in tempering using the microwave, but my process lacks the consistency to produce in larger volume. At times the tempering just wouldn't set that well. I work in the tropics, so the room temperature can get a bit high, and my microwave-tempering skill is not up to par.
I was all set to pull the trigger on ordering a Chocovision Rev2, but then I came across the discussions on the EZtemper. So I reviewed through many discussions on the EZtemper, taking notes on the process that Kerry and other members recommended. It also seems that EZtemper will allow me to scale up later on while still being able to continue using the machine in the future, which is a plus.
From the various discussions here, it seems that I can get away with only having two machines: an EZtemper to prepare the cocoa butter and a chocolate melter (size to be determined) to melt the chocolate. If I understand correctly, I will be using the silk from the EZtemper to seed the 1% amount of "silk" when the melting chocolate temperature reaches 33.5C.
The one answer I have yet to find is whether I should keep the chocolate bath at 33.5C after mixing the silk. I assume that 33.5C is the correct temperature to keep the chocolate melter unit at while I manually enrobe the snacks.
Using these two machines will make my life easier, and I can simplify the process. As this is quite an investment, I would appreciate it if anyone could confirm my assumption on whether this process can be this simple and whether 33.5C is the correct standby temperature.
I plan a trip to the US soon, so if the process is as simple as I understand, I am keen to place my order with Kerry.
Thank you!