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EZtemper - The Help You Need to Achieve Perfectly Tempered Chocolate FAST!


John DePaula

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Hey Kerry, I just tried pm'ing you...im not sure ifn I did anything wrong. Im using tapatalk and got a message that you can recieve any more messages....so im not sure if thats actually the case or not. Ill send another message when I get to the computer, and thanks for your help!

And Alleguede, those bonbons look beautiful! Even being just solid colors, the tones of the colors looks very unique.

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Experiments continue tonight - 

 

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2% not very silky chocolate that had been in the unit for 24 hours.  Very thick - even thicker than when I stirred it up this morning.  

 

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A little challenging to stir in this rather stiff seed.

 

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But it appears to have done the trick.

 

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Before seed on the left - after on the right - the left marked badly with a finger - the right didn't. Plan to leave these overnight and see how they look tomorrow.

 

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Needed to dip another bag of cookies. 

 

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With tempered dark - dipped some Trader Joe's ginger and made some ginger marshmallow clusters.

 

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Pop rock bark with some milk and dark.

 

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Remaining milk as bars with crystallized rose petal bits.

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Here are the tests from last night's batch seeded with chocolate in place of cocoa butter - it's much clearer this am that the before seeding test is no good.

 

I took the 'chocolate seed' and put it to 34.5 in order to see if I could make it a bit softer and easier to mix in. Here are the tests - 

 

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Clearly closer to tempered - but not close enough.

 

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Next experiment - chocolate chopped to hopefully give a softer mass.

 

 

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I posted on  Confections! What did we make? (2014 – ) about my experience making dulcey with EZtemper silk.

 

​I'll post a few teaser photos here.

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So thick, I thought I had killed it.

 

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Thinned out as it cooled.

 

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Added silk and stirred.

 

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Tests before and after silk

 

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Finished bars.  I am really enjoying using the EZtemper silk. It has made making things so much faster!!

 

 

 

Edited by Smithy
Rotated photos per member request (log)
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Ruth Kendrick

Chocolot
Artisan Chocolates and Toffees
www.chocolot.com

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IMG_0393.jpg

 

Fooling around with coloured cocoa butter - I set one unit at 35 and held some bottles in it overnight. They worked perfectly for splattering and spraying with my Fuji.

 

Tempered the dark chocolate using the silk, added some silk to the filling and was able to back them off in less than 30 minutes.

 

Trying to get some video footage with a borrowed GoPro - not going well!

Edited by Kerry Beal (log)
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attachicon.gifIMG_0393.jpg

 

Fooling around with coloured cocoa butter - I set one unit at 35 and held some bottles in it overnight. They worked perfectly for splattering and spraying with my Fuji.

 

Tempered the dark chocolate using the silk, added some silk to the filling and was able to back them off in less than 30 minutes.

 

Trying to get some video footage with a borrowed GoPro - not going well!

 

So did you have to do anything but shake the bottle? Just put in the EZ and walked away?

Ruth Kendrick

Chocolot
Artisan Chocolates and Toffees
www.chocolot.com

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Uses regular cocoa butter (it's got to be real though - in my trials I discovered that I'd fallen victim to the purchase of a 50 lb pail of something labelled cocoa butter that wasn't!).

 

No software to updates.  It will run on 220 - either need to change the plug into the power supply or use a wall adapter.

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Never did - considering taking some up to my favourite fat chemist at Guelph and seeing if he would run it through the chromatograph.  

 

Certainly would explain why it never worked well for coloured cocoa butter. 

Edited by Kerry Beal (log)
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Getting ready for two upcoming events - the 'Affair du Chocolat', a charity event for the Brain Injury Associations and a Fun Fair at a local school. I also have 3 gift baskets to produce for charity events.

 

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Liquorice sticks

 

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With the leftover chocolate from decorating the sticks - a vanilla and dried blueberry bark.

 

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Truffles - these - in addition to the oreos dipped a few days back will be what is decorated at the charity event.

 

The leftover truffle chocolate went towards a coffee and black pepper bark.  

 

 

 

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So you know how the beautiful bottles of colored cacao butter have an indication on it saying that one might need to retemper it. If you add some of the silk (any quantity works as long as it is at least 1%) when you are at 30 degrees and shake it well it guarantees a flawless spray - I was coming to the end of a bottle of princess pink warmed it up to 35c (pretty liquid) added 10g gave it a shake and used it with no issues.

I also made my white colour I use to coat after I spray the shinny colour. I usually melt my cacao butter in a pot on the induction on slow temperature. It generally fully melts around 38/40c ish. I incorporate my titanium dioxide. Blend it well. Before I would seed with cacao butter or marble it. But since the EZtemper has joined my toys, I add a tip of a knife at 34c for 200g stir it and let it set. The result comes out identical to the pre bottled ones but Much cheaper.

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Put together a gift basket for the folks at Fuji spray guns - they provided us with a generous gift certificate for our workshop.

 

Only thing in the basket not pre-crystallized with the EZtemper were the panned cherries.  

 

 

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Kerry, after you've added the 'silk' to the molten untempered chocolate, can you keep the chocolate at the temp of the silk? 

 

is that how you can pour and make thinner shells?

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Yup - you can hold at 33.5 or so - that makes a big difference with white chocolate!

 

Kerry,

This is a significant figure for white chocolate--33.5C/92.3F, well above the usual figure given for working with it (29C/84F).  If it's not a trade secret, can you explain how the tempered cocoa butter is able to make that possible?  (You may recall that I have often had a lot of trouble molding with Valrhona Opalys--so much trouble that you offered to speak to the Valrhona folks when you were there this year).

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Jim - I did speak to the valrhona people about that (was actually trying to figure out where we had been discussing that so I could respond to you) - they said the white was very susceptible to over-crystallization so you had to take care not to scrape the last bits off the table into the bowl - keep the sides of the bowl warm and scrupulously clean.

 

Traditional tempering requires cooling down to the point where you create a critical amount of form V crystals, then reheating to melt out the 'bad' forms without melting out the form V you have produced.  

 

In this case you are introducing the critical amount of form V crystals at a temperature where they are stable and won't melt out. 

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Kerry,

We discussed the Valrhona issue in a "Molded Chocolates" thread--which was a merged topic.  Thanks very much for remembering to ask the question when you were in France, and in a way I'm relieved to read that it's a "known problem."  Oddly, that kind of problem is comforting (meaning I'm probably not the only one having the difficulty).  Recently I have begun adding some cocoa butter to Opalys when using it for molding, but I don't like doing that because really it's changing the flavor from what the manufacturer intended--and, in my opinion, no matter what is said, cocoa butter (Cacao Barry in my case) does have a taste of its own.

 

By the way, have you posted any photos from that Valrhona workshop?

 

So, when you are adding the cocoa butter from the EZtemper to white chocolate, do you just bring the melted chocolate down to 33.5F/92.3F, add the "silk," then stir for a minute or so, and use it at that temperature?  No need to bring it down to the manufacturer's recommended working temp--as one does with Mycryo or any other tempering method?  Not that I don't believe you, but it would take a little courage the first time to use white chocolate at that temp.  But it does sound promising.

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Kerry,

We discussed the Valrhona issue in a "Molded Chocolates" thread--which was a merged topic.  Thanks very much for remembering to ask the question when you were in France, and in a way I'm relieved to read that it's a "known problem."  Oddly, that kind of problem is comforting (meaning I'm probably not the only one having the difficulty).  Recently I have begun adding some cocoa butter to Opalys when using it for molding, but I don't like doing that because really it's changing the flavor from what the manufacturer intended--and, in my opinion, no matter what is said, cocoa butter (Cacao Barry in my case) does have a taste of its own.

 

By the way, have you posted any photos from that Valrhona workshop?

 

So, when you are adding the cocoa butter from the EZtemper to white chocolate, do you just bring the melted chocolate down to 33.5F/92.3F, add the "silk," then stir for a minute or so, and use it at that temperature?  No need to bring it down to the manufacturer's recommended working temp--as one does with Mycryo or any other tempering method?  Not that I don't believe you, but it would take a little courage the first time to use white chocolate at that temp.  But it does sound promising.

I posted a bit on the Valrhona workshop in Chocdoc Goes to France - but not all the details as it wasn't really mine to share.  

 

I'll do some white chocolate tonight to show you.

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Dammit, I wasn't going to read this thread because I knew it would make me want one.   Seems like the EZ temper plus a couple of melters could replace a small but much more expensive tempering machine.  That is, if the machine was only to be used for tempering and not with an enrobing line.  Kerry, has this changed your habits with regard to your Selmi?

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