How To Temper Chocolate Without A Microwave / How To Temper Chocolate Without A Thermometer

Learning how to temper chocolate without a microwave or thermometer is actually really easy – no fancy equipment necessary. Once you learn how, you can make all sorts of decorations and even your own chocolate bars.

To make fancy shapes and decorations with chocolate, you always have to temper chocolate to make sure it sets completely and doesn't flop around. It also gives it a nice glossy sheen, but the most important of course is the setting.

Although they do make life easier, there's no need to buy an expensive chocolate tempering machine to temper chocolate at home, or have a marble slab to do it on either. My method lets you even temper chocolate without a microwave, but if you do happen to have one then you can use a similar technique to 'seed' and temper any chocolate. This method works well with all chocolates – dark, milk, white, blonde and ruby.

You can also see how to do this with my YouTube tutorial video:

Ready? Let's go.

Ingredients:

Any chocolate (not 'fake' compound chocolate or chocolate-flavoured covering)

Method:

1. Let's say we want to temper around 100g dark chocolate: take 50g dark chocolate (half the quantity you want to end up with), break it up and place it in a heatproof bowl.

2. Bring a pan of water to a gentle simmer, and place the bowl on top, making sure the bottom of the bowl doesn't touch the water.

3. Melt the chocolate until it's almost half-melted, and take the bowl off the heat. Stir continuously until completely melted. (If you want at this stage, you can scrape the melted chocolate into a clean, cool bowl for faster tempering – or you can continue with your melting bowl).

4. Gradually add the rest of your unmelted chocolate, chunk by chunk and stirring constantly, until the bowl and chocolate has cooled down and no more will melt. You might find the chocolate begins to feel stiff. Test if it's properly tempered by dipping a cold metal spoon into it and popping it in the fridge for about a minute. If it's set firmly and you can touch it for a few seconds without it instantly turning into a watery melted mess, it's ready.

5. Now you can pour your tempered chocolate into a mould to set! If it's too stiff, pop it back on the hot water pan for a few seconds to loosten it back up. But only for a few seconds – you don't want to heat it up so much that you bring it back out of temper.

Enjoy, and have fun.