The Easiest Way to Temper Chocolate (2024)

Published 12/17/2019, Last updated 4/17/2022 by Stef

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Tempered chocolate breaks with a clean, crisp snap, shines beautifully, and has a smooth texture. While professionals often use expensive machines to prepare chocolate this way, you can do it using the partial melt method with your microwave!

What Is Tempered Chocolate?

Simply, it’s chocolate that has been heated and cooled in just the right way to produce smooth, shiny chocolate with a good snap.

From a not-so-simple chemistry perspective, cocoa butter molecules in tempered chocolate are lined up to make onlyform-5 beta crystals. Other crystal forms yield chocolate with an unpleasant mouth feel and rough texture, and we eliminate those when we properly temper chocolate.

Why Tempering is Important

If you just melt and cool chocolate any which way, it doesn’t harden with the characteristics we’re looking for. The chocolate could end up rubbery and fugdey, lack luster, or crumble. This indicates that it is out of temper and that the cocoa butter molecules have formed other types of unwanted crystals.

Chocolate that is out of temper may also bloom. (If your old chocolate has turned gray, then you’ve seen blooming.)

Tempering gives chocolate desirable qualities:

• It will be dense and will not crumble.
• It will be shiny. This indicates that the internal crystal structure is uniform.
• It will have a good, clean snap. Chocolate that isn’t tempered won’t make a sound when you break it.
• It will be stable at room temperature. Putting a piece in your hand for a moment should not leave a trail of melted chocolate.

How It’s Made

I learned how to temper chocolate from the pros at Kakao Chocolate. I got to be a chocolatier for a day – this meant that, in addition to being trained by a professional, I got to eat all of the chocolate that I wanted all day long. Hello, sugar high!

Jenny from Kakao taught me that if she isn’t using the expensive tempering machine [paid link] shown above (these machines cost almost $2,000), she uses the partial melt method. I took out my notebook.

The partial melt method sounds fancy but is pretty simple – it’s how you can temper chocolate using only a microwave.

Expert Tips and FAQs

Which Chocolate Can Be Tempered?

Not all chocolate can be tempered with this partial melt method. You must start with chocolate that has already been tempered if you’re going to temper chocolate using the microwave.

The best chocolate to use is:

• Chocolate discs (I like using Callebaut chocolate discs [paid link] or TCHO discs [paid link]) – Chocolate discs are designed for melting and they are already tempered – a requirement for this method of tempering.
• A block of tempered chocolate [paid link] – You would need to chop it into small pieces yourself. An inexpensive chocolate chopper [paid link] can help with this.
• Some chocolate bars – I’ve had great success with breaking up Lily’s Dark Chocolate Baking Bars and tempering them. Be careful of which chocolate bar you use. If you see ingredients like vegetable oil, coconut oil, or even artificial chocolate flavoring in a chocolate bar, avoid that bar; those ingredients will interfere with the tempering process.

You should absolutely avoid other types of chocolate:

• Chocolate chips are designed to hold their shape while cookies are in the oven, so they aren’t the best choice for melting and tempering.
• Unsweetened chocolate (sometimes labeled baking chocolate) – If you’ve ever tasted that chocolate on its own, you’ll know why. It’s only meant to be eaten after being mixed with sugar in baked goods.
• Candy melts – Candy melts [paid link] are easy to work with. You don’t need to worry about tempering at all. But, they aren’t real chocolate and their flavor won’t be nearly as good as the real thing! You should be wary of chocolate labeled “compound chocolate” or “chocolate coating” as the texture and taste is totally different from the real deal.

The Chemistry of Tempering

Cocoa butter molecules can form six different forms of crystals. Crystals that are form-1 through form-4 melt at or below 27.3 C (about 81 F). Form-5 beta crystals – what you’re looking for – have a melting point of 33.8 C (about 93 F). Form-6 crystals don’t even form from melted, tempered chocolate; they appear months later and you can often see evidence of form-6 crystal formation as surface blooming.

Tempered chocolate has cocoa butter crystals that only occur in a particular form. The tempering process has only a few aims:

1. You want to dissolve cocoa butter crystal forms that are undesirable.
2. You want cocoa butter crystals to form in the one crystal structure (form-5 beta crystals) that guarantees the desirable unique properties.

When you heat chocolate in the microwave so that 75% of it is melted, the melted cocoa butter is heated so no crystal forms remain. Stirring in solid chocolate until it melts cools the chocolate down. Cocoa butter molecules begin to crystallize and form form-5 crystals. The unmelted, tempered chocolate you add to your bowl acts as a seed for proper form-5 beta crystal formation.

Tip: If you accidentally melt all of your chocolate in the microwave instead of only 75% of it, add unmelted, tempered chocolate to the bowl and stir until it melts completely.

Using a Candy Thermometer

You don’t need to use a candy thermometer [paid link] when you temper chocolate in a microwave, but doing so can be helpful if you want a really great end result.

Tip: To not damage the chocolate, it’s recommended that chocolate never go over 122 F (for dark, semisweet, and bittersweet chocolate) or 105 F (for milk and white chocolate). Once over these temperatures, the chocolate will become thick, have a grainy texture, and might even burn.

FAQs

It doesn’t matter if chocolate is tempered when using it in cake batter. However, if your chocolate will be visible in or important in your end product, tempering is critical. It is fantastic for:

• Chocolate leaves
• Ganache
• Bonbons
• Chocolate-dipped fruits
• Madeleines
• Chocolate bark
• Baumkuchen

See Also…

• Web Story: How to temper chocolate