Simple Chocolate Techniques You Need To Know

hello I'm here to share with you some of my favorite chocolate hacks now these are simple technics well maybe simple for me but fairly easy to execute but have the absolute wow factor when they're presented we're creating all chocolate decorations is to temper the chocolate because I'm sure you're using chocolate with cocoa butter and not vegetable fat I've melted the chocolate in a plastic bowl too I've got 50 percent liquid 50 percent solid chocolate then I'm just gonna simply stir it so you can see there I've still got some lumps in there but I've got some liquid so the liquid is gonna be warm enough to melt the solid chocolate once it's all mounted it should be tempered now if it feels hot to touch it's probably not tempered and I'm going to show you how we do a quick test to see if it's tempered on up lots of vigorous stirring if it's not all melted but it's very close you need some additional heat if you use a hairdryer or paint stripper gun which is dry heat not adding any moisture to gently warm it up remember don't use glass always a plastic bowl once all the chocolates melted and you've thoroughly mixed it we're going to do a test to see if it's tempered or not how we know if the chocolate is tempered or not is by dipping some baking paper into the chocolate and leaving it at room temperature it'll take five minutes for dark chocolate to set seven minutes for milk chocolate and ten minutes for why that is if your room temperature is below 24 degrees Celsius much above 24 degrees Celsius it's going to be very challenging for the chocolate to set at room temperature place this on an ambient surface not anything too cold then we're going to wait the five minutes to see if it's set to know it's tempered if it's not tempered we need to add some more chocolate in but because the chocolate is already colder it's a good idea to add grated chocolate in if you can so it's going to melt very quickly now I've got the chocolate test here that are sets I'm giving it the five minutes you will never be shiny when it's on baking paper because baking paper is porous so chocolate will only be shiny if you contract it against a polished surface but the fact that I can pick that off doesn't have any white lines on it and it actually has a snap means that we're ready to go now have a acetate here this is a firm plastic this is what I mean about getting a shine on chocolate by using a sheet of plastic it's going to ensure as a chocolate contracts it's going to have a really shiny polished surface you can get acetate from stationery shops and also art supply stores this might be hard for you to see I've got two sheets this is a big shoe that comes like this and I've just cut it in half the beauty of the acetate as long as you don't mark it too much you can use it over and over and over again now keep in mind with this particular technique you can do any sort of chocolate white milk or dark the tempering technique is exactly the same you can also put a little bit of shimmer or metallic powder on the acetate before you pour the chocolate on if you're wanting to I haven't told you what we're making yet have either to be awkward we're actually making chocolate curls is this a simple and effective way of making chocolate curls with a plastic sheet if you're not great with a knife or a scraper and creating them on the bench top and the beauty of these chocolate curls is they're going to be shiny I find it easiest to spread the chocolate with an angled palette knife so it has it all step down here we angle the palette knife slightly and we spread it onto the sheet as I said you might not be able to see the sheet too clearly don't go backwards and forwards too many times because it'll inhibit the chocolates ability to contract once we've got it there I hold down one side pick up the other side and I give it a tap and that's gonna level out this side a little bit so now we're gonna let that set the beauty of working with Coventry chocolate with cocoa butter is when this just sets we still have time to manipulate the chocolate and shape it so don't go anywhere because dark chocolate sets the fastest but the reason I'm using dark chocolate is because it's also the shiniest because it has the most cocoa butter in it and cocoa butter is what makes the chocolate contract so we're just starting to set its weight in have a knife handy ready to go and we're gonna start the center you have to work fairly quickly with this and if you want to start with a small a bit of plastic you can now I'm just going to even off the edges make sure it's set enough that when you actually cut through it's gonna hold if it's still a little bit liquid it will run back into itself then we start in the center and just curving the knife slowly always making a point in the center we just come around to the outside going right around Eve the chocolates starting to set you might find yourself just making the curls a little bit bigger as you go around so it goes a little bit faster now this is the beauty of coverture chocolate that's still flexible now for me to actually curl it how tight you curl it will determine how tight the chocolate curls actually are but I think that's okay just a little bit of sticky tape there and that's going to go into the fridge for approximately 5 minutes then I'm gonna let it sit at room temperature as long as your room temperatures not above 24 degrees Celsius for about an hour before unrolling them in fact if you're going to create these chocolate curls for a dessert or a cake leave them in the plastic right until you're putting them onto the product that way they'll be exceptionally shiny ready for you to serve the chocolate curls haven't really had enough time they probably need another hour or so we can see here with the chocolate that we've still got some types of the chocolate that haven't fully contracted so when I peel the plastic off this part isn't going to be as shiny as this part here so when you see that give them a little bit more time before you actually take the plastic off a little bit short of time so I'm gonna show you the technique but this is probably a good example to show you what'll happen on these bits here they haven't fully contracted you can put it back in the fridge but don't put it in the fridge for too long because you can get sugar bloom which is where the sugar dissolves and recrystallizes now what I love about these decorations 1 they're really shiny there'll be slightly different shapes they look fantastic on top of a desert or a large cake if you're making a centerpiece they're all different shapes and sizes but you can control how thin they are how long they are by how you actually cut them you can keep them in the plastic until you're ready to use them for as long as possible and then I mold them just before placing them on your finished dessert or cake I love this next decoration I always say these are really easy but I completely understand that I've been working with chocolate for a very long time so for me it's quite simple but I think these are achievable now I'm going to use a paper piping bag which we have a video on our channel on how to make these but you can just simply spoon the chocolate onto the baking paper for this particular decoration I like to call these chocolate eyelashes we've got some strips of baking paper here and I've taken a bar so you can take a jug something that's got a slight curve that'll enable us to slide these into after we've finished the decoration chocolate will contract anyway to give us a slight curve this is just going to give us a helping hand I have the chocolate here that is tempered we do have in-depth videos on tampering if you'd like to watch that so we filled the bag just halfway fold away from the scene but now just cut a small amount off the end of the bag take one of our strips then we pipe in dots now only do a couple of dots at the start until you get into a rhythm otherwise the chocolates gonna set before you get a chance to spread it so dot of chocolate I'm gonna do three at a time teaspoon now the angle of the teaspoon is important we hold it straight up and down do another three you can go back over it if you're not happy with the first one and that's because I got lazy and I was angling my spoon so remember keep your spoon straight up and down now I'm curbing them slightly as I go now I'm going to put them into my bars here to give them just a slight curve you can let this set at room temperature as long as your room temperature is below 24 degrees Celsius or you can place them in the fridge if you place them in the fridge they are gonna contract and curl up more than they will if you leave them at room temperature I would leave them on the paper and till you're ready to use them on your dessert cake or simply in an ice cream decoration this technique works with white milk or dark chocolate or you can color some white chocolate with some oil soluble color as well to make some brightly colored ones now I've been very patient and that eyelashes have set I know they don't look like much now but trust me standing up in some cream on top of a pavlova or a nice dessert or a cake they look absolutely fantastic with some chunky nuts a little bit of icing sugar or some cocoa powder you can also if you want to actually break them in half for some finer decorations so then you can place them at different angles on a product as well the beauty of making decorations with just pure chocolate is that they last a very long time so you can keep those for months as long as they're not heat affected now this is my cheats way of spreading chocolate I'm spreading it on a plastic sheet so the decorations will be shiny you can also spread it on some baking paper but keep in mind the decorations will be dull because baking paper is porous got tempered chocolate here and a PVC pipe which is what we're going to use to spread the chocolate I'm not going to put too much chocolate on because it can get quite messy if you make too big a sheet it'll start to set before you have time to cut it so a line of chocolate now with a PVC pipe just gently without putting too much pressure on it we're going to use this to spread the chocolate now you don't stop in the middle because you'll get a line we just use one motion across the plastic sheet so starting here so we have a small wedge here of chocolate that I'll cut off and remelt soon as this starts to set I can cut out my different decorations now you can put some metallic powder on the plastic or on the baking paper view onto but often people struggle to spread chocolate evenly and this is going to solve all of your problems soon as it starts to set start cutting immediately now if you're wanting these decorations to stay flat you need to place them between two flat trays as the chocolate contracts you can place it in the fridge for 5 minutes or simply leave them at room temperature as long as your room temperature is not too hot at this stage though you can still curl them if you want to give the chocolate decorations a bit of movement you can actually curl them and take the plastic this shows you how simple it is to spread chocolate I simply cut off a thick piece here with a pair of scissors and I've just cut a scalloped chocolate shape look perfectly flat disks of chocolate and they're all very even the beauty of having even chocolate as well means that it's going to set evenly either in the fridge or at room temperature so the chocolates not going to have what we call cooling lines if you've got thicker parts and thinner parts of chocolate the thinner part sets first and it pulls away from the thicker part so you may get a crack you may also get a glossy and matte finish as they're actually setting and contracting differently leave this decoration on the plastic until you need it it's great to have a combination of matte and shine decorations so this decoration has a matte finish and it's great if you've got a really glossy or shiny glaze it's matte because we're using baking paper which is porous which is always going to give us a matte finish on the chocolate so to give us some texture I'm going to scrunch it up then just smooth it out again because of chocolate is Matt I'm gonna add a little bit of shimmer with some gold metallic powder just when you're using metallics brush them on but make sure there's no excess powder if there's excess powder your chocolates not going to adhere to the paper if you don't have metallic powder just simply use the baking paper and the chocolate and the texture looks fantastic either with white milk or dark chocolate now this is probably hard to see but I've just added a little bit of metallic powder to the surface of the paper just to give a little bit of a shimmer when we pull the chocolate off it the glitter as well now I have chocolate here that is already tempered I'm gonna spread it on just make sure that you haven't got any creases that are really protruding or sticking up because it'll cut through the chocolate we're gonna spread this with an angled palate knife now I'm not going to do the whole sheet so I'm just going to do enough to show you the technique so we got the chocolate on using the angled pallet and I've just angled slightly spreading it across now your chocolate decoration shouldn't be too thick because you still want people to be able to bite into it and get a beautiful snap so just turn it out a little bit wipe the excess on the side of the bowl then we hold one corner down and we give this corner a shape just to level it out now you have the option of curling this of keeping this as it is you don't have to cut this one if you don't want to because it does look quite good if you just break rustic pieces off or you can use the cutter you can cut it into a grid so many different options with how you can utilize this particular technique as a garnish now this is our beautiful textured chocolate it's going to have a slightly matte finish because we've done it on baking paper and rather than cut it into individual shapes I'm just going to peel the paper off and then break it up so I've got a little bit of a gold shimmer but we can just break into different smaller sized pieces which fantastic coming out of a cake or a dessert even a tart even use these as plaques around the side of the cake that looks really great as well and what makes it look so pretty is all the different texture that we've created with the paper or to simply finish off a bowl of ice cream very simple decoration but very effective he's an easy technique and a great garnish my husband may or may not watch this so I'm spraying oil on my work surface so rather than spray it on the marble bench I'm gonna use a wooden chopping board just in case he's watching now I've got some vegetable oil sprayer I'm just gonna spray a thin line just on the wood so I can adhere some strips of baking paper now make these as wide as as high as you want your feather does that make sense so if you want a longer feather you'll need to use a bigger knife but you also need your baking paper to go a little bit higher tempered some white chocolate we melted in the microwave till it's half liquid half solid chocolate then vigorously stir it we only have to temper chocolate that contains cocoa butter but I know that that's all you're ever going to use now to create my feathers I'm using a knife and this knife the blade is the same shape on both sides which is important because a lot of knives will actually have one side curved on one side straight and particularly if you've sharpened your knives you're not gonna have an even curve on both sides we're using white chocolate but you can make the feathers really any color that you like I'm just going to UM take that spoon out angle the bowl dip the knife in tap it on the surface to pop any air bubbles then wipe this edge a little bit to shorten it then we press on the surface and we pull up and pull up to create a little bit of a stem probably didn't help I have my finger there maybe you didn't see that once I'll try it without my finger right in the way Hey tap to eliminate any air bubbles push it to make it a little bit shorter then we pull it right the way through so if you haven't got a stem just go again probably not called a stem a little stick part at the end of the feather what's that cool and we just keep going till the strip of paper is full I guarantee you'll break a few feathers so it's always good to have a few extra pull it up and keep going if you chocolate starts to get a little bit cold which mine is getting thicker and thicker I think I'll only get one more before I need to reheat it you can reheat your chocolate with a hairdryer or a paint stripper gun this stage it's hard to reheat it in the microwave because you're pretty likely to overheat it so I'm going to give that a quick reheat then I'm going to do a few more feathers till I finish the strip last one now we can set these at room temperature or you can place them in the fridge particularly if your room temperature is warm we can take this one step further if you'd like I'm going to show you how to make some little mix in the side of the feathers once they set to make them look like real rigid edge feathers the feathers of set which they will really quickly white chocolate sets at room temperature in about ten minutes so we can peel them off trying not to break our little stemi thing at the bottom so I'm not quite sure of the day well I've got a heat gun here you can also use a hairdryer or you can warm the knife with a gas torch we just want to slightly heat the knife but we don't want it to be too hot if you've got cold hands like me you can actually pick the feathers up and we're just making a couple of melted indents in there to make them look a bit more like feathers so when you do that on the other side don't match them up you need a bit of paper towel and wipe your knife before you warm it again otherwise the chocolates going to burn onto the knife now if you have hot hands put the feather on it some baking paper and then just melt it this way [Music] so when you're making the indents you're going down with on an angle is starting to look a little bit hot others you can notice that I'm picking out the best ones to show you okay I'm just dodging the ones that don't look so great [Music] so I've made some of the V's slightly bigger than some of the others so a little bit more open so put a little bit more pressure on with the knife but I think they look really cute and they make a fantastic chocolate garnish if you enjoyed that episode you will love my channel subscribe today for even more tutorials on chocolate and baking best of all it's free to get on it

Channel: Kirsten Tibballs

Views: 1,098,722

Keywords: kirsten, tibballs, how, to, make, create, cook, chocolate, tutorial, easy, bake, pastry, patisserie, savour, school, kirsten tibballs, technique

Id: oEnHeO5K6-Q

Length: 25min 35sec (1535 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 07 2019