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

[CacaoC]

 

It's nice to be back. Since I've moved back in my hometown three years ago, I really miss my foodies friends from Montreal. I want to reconnect with my creativity for cooking and chocolate confections, this community is great source of inspiration!

 

Thanks for the answers.

 

Does the EZtemper unit have a timer for the first 12 hours?  I sometime cook over my family's kitchen in the country side on weekends where power outage are quite frequent, especially during the night, so it's hard to predict how they last.  I'll do a  little bit research to see if those uninterruptible power supply devices could be used safely with the EZtemper.

[Kerry Beal]

6 hours ago, CacaoC said:

 

It's nice to be back. Since I've moved back in my hometown three years ago, I really miss my foodies friends from Montreal. I want to reconnect with my creativity for cooking and chocolate confections, this community is great source of inspiration!

 

Thanks for the answers.

 

Does the EZtemper unit have a timer for the first 12 hours?  I sometime cook over my family's kitchen in the country side on weekends where power outage are quite frequent, especially during the night, so it's hard to predict how they last.  I'll do a  little bit research to see if those uninterruptible power supply devices could be used safely with the EZtemper.

You could set the timer if you wanted but it would just beep and annoy the family. I've disabled the timer's ability to turn the unit off at the end of the time as that kind of defeats the purpose of having the unit on! 

 

I'd suggest running it through something like this when you are at the family kitchen - you can keep it plugged in, plug in the EZtemper to the 120 V - when the power goes off it continues to power the EZtemper - when the power comes back on - it just recharges the battery pack. 

[patris]

I am now the proud owner of an EZtemper - let me add my voice to the chorus of devoted fans! It made its debut this weekend with a group of friends and family whom I had over for a day-long holiday chocolate making spree (documented here and with lots and LOTS of help from @Kerry Beal). Altogether, the group went through about 17 kilos of white, milk, and dark chocolate over the course of about 5 hours, from molded bonbons to dipped confections to barks and clusters. Keeping up with tempering that much chocolate was so much faster and easier than my previously accustomed microwave/seeding method, and everything turned out absolutely beautiful. My guests were tickled to be able to produce such nice-looking items without having to resort to melty wafers, and we all decided that this will be an annual event - with some talk about finding excuses to do more of it outside the December holidays! I do chocolates/confections as a hobby, mostly for friends and family, but I do think that having an EZtemper will get me in the chocolate kitchen more often, and certainly make the whole process even more enjoyable.

[Kerry Beal]

 

Today I had the pleasure of meeting up with @pastryani - and look at the treats she brought me! She has had her EZtemper 1 year to the day I just noticed - and she has certainly made good use of it.

Edited January 4, 2017 by Kerry Beal (log)

[pastryani]

Arghh the red piping gel on the peppermint bonbon got all smudged.. Bah!! .

 

Has it been 1 year already?!!  Wow time flies when you're making chocolate (and it only takes 1 minute to temper!).   For either small or large batches, the EZ has been super helpful and is my go-to method for tempering chocolate.  It spoils you and I'd be lost without it - thanks Kerry for such a great machine. 

[Tri2Cook]

8 hours ago, pastryani said:

Arghh the red piping gel on the peppermint bonbon got all smudged.. Bah!! .

They look awesome! Even with you pointing it out, I don't see anything that looks bad to me. But I do understand that perfectionist thing that makes the tiniest flaw on our own work be the only thing we can see when we look at it.

[Bentley]

One thing I've wondered about with the EZ Temper is what happens to excess chocolate.  For example, I do small batches mostly, maybe 2 molds at a time, but I temper about 1kg of chocolate to do that.  A lot of that chocolate is left over, and I pour it out on a sheet pan, break it into pieces and store it for reuse later.  If I were to temper it by adding 1% silk, and every time I reuse it, add another 1% silk to retemper it, at what point does the addition of extra cocoa butter become an issue? How many times can I retemper the chocolate?

[Kerry Beal]

1 hour ago, Bentley said:

One thing I've wondered about with the EZ Temper is what happens to excess chocolate.  For example, I do small batches mostly, maybe 2 molds at a time, but I temper about 1kg of chocolate to do that.  A lot of that chocolate is left over, and I pour it out on a sheet pan, break it into pieces and store it for reuse later.  If I were to temper it by adding 1% silk, and every time I reuse it, add another 1% silk to retemper it, at what point does the addition of extra cocoa butter become an issue? How many times can I retemper the chocolate?

I usually add some fresh chocolate when I retemper anyway - except for bunny and Santa eyes - those I keep a measuring cup with dark chocolate and retemper over and over - by the end of the season it's probably 80% cocoa butter - but works just fine!

[pastrygirl]

Kerry, a question on CB silk ...

 

I recently read a blog post about silk ... the author said you can use it right away or let it solidify and shave off bits to use as solid seed, a la Mycryo.  My question is, is the solidified silk more effective seed than if you had tempered and cooled CB without the lengthy silk process?  Is the solid silk higher in beta crystals and therefore superior to CB tempered in one of the usual ways?  Or is it a waste of a day to make silk then let it solidify before use?

 

It seems like everyone here uses silk in the softened state ...

 

Just curious.

 

thanks!

Edited March 3, 2017 by pastrygirl
by request (log)

[Kerry Beal]

Solidified is really no different from using grated cocoa butter I don't think - though I haven't tried it - the soft silk is definitely the easiest to incorporate. 

[pastrygirl]

Yeah, my understanding was that soft and easy to incorporate was the main bonus - having silk kept warm, ready, and easy to use.  If it hardened back into some super cocoa butter with amazing powers, that would be one thing.  Otherwise, chunks are chunks?

[Kerry Beal]

9 hours ago, pastrygirl said:

Yeah, my understanding was that soft and easy to incorporate was the main bonus - having silk kept warm, ready, and easy to use.  If it hardened back into some super cocoa butter with amazing powers, that would be one thing.  Otherwise, chunks are chunks?

Let me experiment with this when I get a few minutes.

 

[Kerry Beal]

Ok - experiments done - my whole chocolate room is now covered in little electrostatically charged cocoa butter shavings! I found a bunch on my elbows when I got back upstairs.

 

Melted 1 kg of chocolate - had it at 33.5 C. Dipped the first offset for untempered - it finally dried in about 45 minutes. Earlier in the day I had melted some cocoa butter, put a sample in the fridge, some at room temperature. I also took some EZtemper silk - molded it. Each of these 3 solid cocoa butters were then microplaned (hence the cocoa butter covered room) and 2.5 grams of each were put aside. 

 

To 250 grams of 33.5 degree chocolate I added one of the shaved cocoa butters or the soft EZtemper silk. The shaved cocoa butter certainly mixed in better than mycryo - not sure if that would be true if it weren't freshly shaved.

 

 

From the left - untempered, cocoa butter placed in fridge from melted, cocoa butter room temperature until solid, grated silk, soft silk and finally all the samples mixed back together and another few grams of soft silk added.

 

Untempered - clearly not good, fridge cocoa butter - not good, room temperature cocoa butter - better but marked with finger and somewhat streaky and gritty to the touch - indicating poor temper, grated silk - certainly better than the previous 3 but not quite as good as the soft silk as indicated by a slight graininess felt when I ran my finger along it. The two on the right were smooth and velvety to the touch. 

 

So in a pinch - if you have made silk that has returned to room temperature and have it available to grate - you can probably get reasonable results. Hell of a lot easier to incorporate than Mycyro for sure. But beware the flying cocoa butter flakes!

Edited March 4, 2017 by Kerry Beal (log)

[pastrygirl]

Wow, thanks, Kerry!

[Kerry Beal]

 

Here's how they look 24 hours later. You can now more clearly see how poor the temper is with the 'plain' cocoa butter - particularly with the cocoa butter that was refrigerated from melted. 

 

 

[Kerry Beal]

 

Had a request for some dipped Oreos for my clinic at the Men's Mission next Friday - asked hubby to pick up a package at the grocery store - notice he brought home two packages. He has the cutest grin when he get's caught! He does love the dipped Oreos. 

 

 

 

Time to get started on Easter!

 

Had a request for some dipped Oreo's for my clinic at the Men's Mission next Friday - asked hubby to pick up a package at the grocery store - notice he brought home two packages. He has the cutest grin when he get's caught!

[Kerry Beal]

PMCA coming up soon! Going to have a booth again. Gotta have frogs and mice - encourages people to send me the samples they promise!

 

 

 

 

 

Tomorrow morning I need to struggle down under the front hall into the crawl space and dig out the boxes to package them in - the back wasn't quite up to the task this evening.

 

[Thanks for the Crepes]

1 hour ago, Kerry Beal said:

Tomorrow morning I need to struggle down under the front hall into the crawl space and dig out the boxes to package them in - the back wasn't quite up to the task this evening.

 

I have such a crawl space under the stairs and behind the coat closet at the front door in the foyer. I call it the black hole. Enter at your own risk. 

 

Beautiful chocolates, as usual!

[Anna N]

@Kerry Beal,

 They are gorgeous as always.

[Tri2Cook]

Those are all beautiful. But being the reptile and amphibian fan I am, I really love those frogs.

[RobertM]

Truly beautiful -

[a_pinch_of]

Love the frogs. Are they filled or solid?

[Kerry Beal]

Just now, a_pinch_of said:

Love the frogs. Are they filled or solid?

Crunchy frogs - just a little bit of freeze dried caramel bits in each.

[Chocolot]

3 minutes ago, Kerry Beal said:

Crunchy frogs - just a little bit of freeze dried caramel bits in each.

 

Wonder where one would get freeze dried caramel bits?:)

[Kerry Beal]

2 minutes ago, Chocolot said:

 

Wonder where one would get freeze dried caramel bits?:)

Sosa.