Chocolate Making

This workbook turns the course into deliberate practice at your own bench. Each section matches a course module and asks you to source real couverture, calibrate your thermometer, temper dark, milk, and white to their curves, build ganache to weighed ratios, and roll truffles, mould bonbons, and enrobe centres. Work through it alongside actual chocolate and you will finish able to temper reliably and confirm it with a smear test, mix ganache to a known firmness, and produce glossy, snapping confections, with logs so your good batches repeat.

Source the right couverture, assemble the kit that matters, and prove you understand what tempering is doing before you melt a thing.

Before buying, record the couverture you intend to use so you choose the right chocolate for the job and learn its working figures. Prefer real couverture in callets over supermarket chips, and start with dark for your first sessions.

Lay out everything you own and fill in what you have versus the beginner kit, so you buy only the gaps. Prioritise an accurate digital thermometer and polycarbonate moulds over anything else.

Deliberately make untempered chocolate so you can recognise failure on sight. Fully melt a small amount of couverture, pour a thin patch onto parchment, and let it set on the counter with no tempering. Beside it, set a patch of chocolate straight from the bag (in temper). Compare after an hour and again the next day.

Calibrate your thermometer, temper each chocolate to its curve by the seeding method, and confirm every batch with a smear test before committing it.

A two-degree error ruins a temper, so verify your thermometer before you trust it. Make a slurry of crushed ice and a little water, stir, and read it; it should show 0 C. Note any offset and apply it to every reading. Repeat with the thermometer you will actually use at the bench.

Temper a small batch of dark couverture by seeding. Melt about three-quarters to 45-50 C, stir in the reserved quarter of callets, cool to 28-29 C, then gently rewarm to a 31-32 C working window. Stir, do not whisk, and lift out any undissolved seed. Run a smear test before deciding it worked.

Record every temper so a good result becomes repeatable rather than lucky. Note the room, the brand, the curve you hit, and how the smear test set.

Build ganache to weighed ratios for each job, infuse and flavour the cream, then roll and finish a tray of truffles three ways.

Make two small dark ganaches by weight: one at 1:1 (soft, for rolled centres) and one at 2:1 chocolate to cream (firm, for piping and moulding). Heat the cream to a steaming 80-90 C, pour over weighed chocolate, rest one to two minutes, then stir from the centre out into a glossy emulsion. Let each set and compare.

Record each ganache you make so a ratio and its flavour are repeatable, and note the firmness and best use.

Set a 2:1 dark ganache until scoopable, pipe or scoop even portions, chill, then roll into rough balls with cocoa-dusted palms. Finish a third in cocoa powder, a third rolled in tempered chocolate then chopped toasted nuts, and a third hand-dipped in a thin tempered shell with a dipping fork.

Mould glossy shelled bonbons with clean release, enrobe cut centres by hand, decorate with restraint, then store, package, and cost a box for sale.

Polish a polycarbonate mould with cotton wool, fill cavities with tempered chocolate, tap out air, invert and drain to a thin even shell, and scrape flush. Once set, fill with cooled ganache (30 C or below) to 2-3 mm below the rim, let it crust overnight, then cap with fresh tempered chocolate and release.

Cut a firm ganache slab into even squares with a warmed knife and chill them. Dip each into tempered chocolate, push under with a fork, tap and drain to a thin even coat, scrape the underside on the rim, and set on parchment. Add one decoration to wet chocolate (transfer sheet, single nut, or a fork mark) before it sets.

Log each batch of moulded or enrobed chocolates so faults trace to a cause and good runs repeat.