Chocolate Tips
Beginner's Tip: If you don't have a double boiler then hillbilly one up. It's what I do. You may need to go to a few thrift stores for this trick. You want the thick Pyrex kind of glass bowl that will fit on top of one of your decent sized pots. You should be looking at a mixing bowl kind of size not a soup or cereal bowl
Put a few inches of water in your pot and put the bowl on it, the water should not be touching the bottom of the bowl. You just want the steam to heat the contents of the bowl, not the liquid water.
You can do this without getting water into your chocolate which can ruin it . Just pay attention to what's going on.
Heat the water in the pot, put the bowl on top of it to act as a heat shield, helping to heat up quicker. Melt your chocolate in the top bowl. When the chocolate gets to the consistency you want take it off the pot, and turn the burner off.
If you need to get the chocolate loose again turn the burner on, put the bowl back on the pot and start stirring again.
Beginner's Tip: Keep stirring when melting. It helps spread the heat around and makes things melt faster. It also stops the chocolate from burning! Not am issue witht he double boiler.
Beginner's Tip: Don't use metal utensils, try using the silicon ones. Using metal tools can shock the chocolate's structure and ruin it.
Beginner's Tip: If you're using a microwave to melt chocolate be careful because chocolate can burn in an instant. Standard practice is to nuke it for 30 seconds, stir, heat for 15, stir, and stop before you think it's done.... keep stirring it because the heat of the molten chocolate helps to melt the solid chocolate chonkers.
Beginner's Tip: If you're adding food gel it's best to put a few drops in the double boiler bowl at the start.
Beginner's Tip: Some candy "oil" flavorings can turn a batch to shit because of a funky chemical interaction. This is pretty much hit and miss. You need to look stuff up and experiment with what you have on hand.
Beginner's Tip: When you're adding stuff into the melting chocolate (food coloring or flavor oils) you want the temps of both things to be warm or hot so it's putting the chocolate into shock.
