Silk Tempering

Silk/Mycryo AKA pre-crystallised cacao butter

You can follow the instructions without reading What is Tempering? and get the right results. I recommend reading it before this if you hope to understand the whole talk of crystals.

When we temper, we arrange the particles in cacao butter in a pattern that has bonds which hold stable at room temperature. Just like in Seeding, we can introduce this pattern in the way of exiting crystals in other chocolate.

This happens even more effectively if instead of adding chocolate, which is only made up of around 50% cacao butter, we instead add pure cacao butter.

In fact, only 1% of cacao butter by weight is enough to temper a whole batch! This is also an excellent solution for chocolate for ganache as the extra fat is usually welcome.

Image Credit: www.bakerykart.com/

This approach tempers chocolate to a very stable (desired) state, at the upper limit of Shape V crystals (What is Tempering). This is a good method to use in fringe cases where others do not, it yields a great outcome.

At Conspiracy chocolate, we do this only in chocolates where there is already 1% cacao butter in the recipe, substituting that for later addition in this way. We also use cacao butter from the same farm the chocolate’s cacao comes from so it does not affect the flavour.

We find most cacao butters in the world smell (and taste) like their packaging. The one we use smells like cherries and tastes amazing, and we will soon sell it, pre-crystallised.

Method

Equipment

• Microplane (cheese grater will do, or very very small knife shavings)

• Thermometer

• Bain-marie / double boiler or another means of adjusting the chocolate’s temperature

• Scale

Steps

1 - Bring your chocolate up to 45ºC, then down to 34-35ºC

Just like in the stove top tempering method, bring your chocolate up to 45º stirring occasionally, then down to 34-35ºC stirring throughout.

2- Add 1% pre crystallised cacao butter by weight

(Your chocolate’s weight) * 0.01 = the amount of Silk needed.

Grate the correct amount and add it to the chocolate. Stir a little bit. Wait 2 minutes. Stir more vigorously, make sure to scrape the sides.

Your chocolate should be tempered.

Other Methods