Chocolate, gift boxes

These are not things wot I made then ate, OK FINE!, I did eat two or three possibly ten of these little candies, rather they are things wot I made then give away. I give them to waiters, waitresses, hair stylists, building service people, delivery people, visitors, everybody. I leave them as tokens of appreciation for the hosts of parties I go to, along with wine or what have you. 

I recently ran out of these little boxes and that is intolerable because I am now somewhat known for them and it is somewhat expected of me to always have them. At least that is what I am imagining is expected. In truth it is possible that nobody gives a crap one way or the other. The reason I ran out is not for lack of chocolate, I have about twenty pounds of that, possibly more, but because making the little boxes is a pain in the butt. The boxes must be printed and that means coaxing one of the printers to cooperate. Then hand cutting the patterns, scoring them, folding and trimming  and gluing them. 

I learned over time that women like these tiny boxes and tend to save them, but men are generally indifferent. I've had boxes returned for refills.

The chocolate is excellent but I am not sure all that many people appreciate the difference between the Venezuelan single source and more easily assessable French blended at half the cost shown below. Generally, Americans grow up on milk chocolate so dark chocolate is sometimes regarded as too intense for them, like diluted coffee is to espresso, or white bread is to wheat, or American lagers are to ordinary regular beer found anywhere else on Earth throughout time that isn't watery swill. But I digress.  And all of that is changing right before my eyes. I am actually surprised how many real chocolate elitists there are out there, and that fills my heart with glee.

These are the tiny ankh pull tabs. The pattern is Egyptian hieroglyphics. When one thinks of chocolate the first association one makes is Egypt, no? Chocolate being a New World thing would have been unknown to ancient Egyptians and chocolate candy would have melted, of course. Egyptians did have carob. There is even a word for it:

It's called nḏm. The ḏ part denotes a dj sound. The little picture is a carob seed pod. We pretend the word sounds like nedjem. It is an ideogram for types of tree and for sweet. 

Anyway, the pull tabs are ankhs as everybody knows means life. Even though one almost never sees in ancient art an ankh all by itself like this, it is usually combined with a 'djed' and a 'was,' often all piled up on each other into one sign meaning 'life, stability, dominion,' kind of like Spock saying , "live long and prosper," and may your back be kept straight.

Couverture chocolate. It is what we chocolatier-types buy in bulk for the production of candy. 

Usually couverture is marketed in the form of discs but this brand is not. It is very inconvenient to have to chop it up because the pieces go flying across the room. It is the reason why I had no idea how good this chocolate is compared with the others. 

Why temper? Chocolate is tempered to strengthen the candy and to stabilize it molecularly. It provides the final product with an attractive sheen and a snap when it is broken.

What is tempering? Tempering is organizing molecules by the use of temperature. Exactly like steel, and I mean EXACTLY like steel, except different. Chocolate is a complex amalgam of molecules including various forms of a fat. It seems odd to read, say, "the melting point of chocolate is 84℉ - 87℉. Ha. That kills me. See? That is not a point, that is a range. A precise temperature is a point. In fact, each precise temperature point is actually a set of more precise points. You know, like body temperature stated as a fraction of a temperature point, 98.6℉.  Everything you ever read about chocolate states a range as a point. The reason why temperature points of chocolate are always stated as a range is because the various constituent molecules all have their own point. 

Perhaps an analogy would be useful. Consider the molecules of chocolate fat to be a bunch of chairs being handled by convention caterers. Raising the temperature a mere 10˚above body temperature enervates the chair handlers and causes them to relax and spread out. Then lowering the temperature a mere 10˚ below body temperature excites the chair handlers into activity of stacking the chairs for storage. But there are Eames chairs, Saarinen chairs, Mies Van der Rohe chairs, Adirondack chairs, folding chairs, wooden chairs, and metal chairs. They do not stack perfectly and the storage closet is a mess even though the chair handlers did their best to stack them, just as crystals form in line one upon another as the crystal formation progresses. So then the temperature is raised again to relax the frenetic organizing, but not as much as the first time and some of the mis-stacked chairs fall out of line and become available for improved positioning as the temperature drops again naturally without mechanical effort of tempering. 

This analogy isn't working out very well.  Come to think about it, chocolate crystalizing is nothing at all like stacking chairs. Forget about chairs.

This tempering machine can melt the chocolate first, then take the chocolate directly to the precise temperature deemed perfect to stabilize any type of chocolate, white, milk, or dark. It can go straight to the temperature to the tenth of a degree. But I do not trust it. I use the go up to melt, then go down beyond the target temperature, then come back up to target temperature, which oddly, the manufacturer calls the 'two temperature method.'  

The instructions printed directly onto the machine do not make clear that the machine is melting the chocolate first and not counting that in the number of steps. It also says to put the chocolate behind the barrier. The barrier is at a diagonal so it is not clear which side is behind. When it says to drop in the seed, is it dropped in the empty side to smear the bowl or dropped in the full chocolate side to become immersed and then pulled back out a dripping mess? It's another of those things like 'husked' VS 'unhusked' that has me completely stopped and confounded. 

Have you noticed how butter holds its shape at room temperature even though it is very soft? A few more degrees and it becomes liquid. Butter is simply chilled, not tempered, because its fat is a single molecule type. Chilled, its molecules are organized into a stable crystalline structure. The soft phase between solid and liquid is important to bakers. It can be in the shape of a stick of butter or it can be whipped to a light creamy foam with sugar.  Chocolate behaves similarly. Tempered chocolate will hold its shape right to the point of near liquid. A mere touch causes it to collapse. 

Untempered chocolate tends to bloom while still solid, that is, its fat molecules migrate disorganized to the surface, still useable and still good, but  leaving an unpleasant mouth-feel. And that is why good tempering is important to candy makers. 

The temperature is taken to 108℉, then down to 85℉, then back up to 94℉.  Chocolate liquifies at just below body temperature. That's why it feels so amazing in your mouth as it disorganizes from solid to soft to liquid.  You will notice the final working temperature of chocolate is below the melting point, not above it. How can this be? Well, hardened chocolate is not like frozen water. Water is more like a single type of molecule, and as already noted, chocolate is more complex than that. If  that explanation is difficult to accept then try this: because I said so.  

At 85℉ the machine signals the operator to drop a piece of "seed" chocolate into the cleared half of the bowl. Basically, this shows or it suggests to the melted portion how to organize its crystals. Otherwise it would organize into a bunch of poorly stacked chairs. Oh wait, we're not talking about chairs anymore.  

This machine works as a hair-dryer blowing directly onto a bowl, and that should give you an idea how you might temper without a machine and without using water baths.  First heat is blown on the bowl to gently raise the temperature, then unheated air is blown onto the bowl to lower the temperature, then the heat is turned on again. It's virtue is the precision in monitoring the temperature of the melted chocolate.  It is very reliable. 

This same thing can be done more quickly using hot and cold water baths. I have used water baths many times, but it is more difficult to monitor the temperature while stirring. The insta-read thermometer I use must be held in one hand while stirring with the other and water must not get into the chocolate or it will seize. Plus the result is less certain. 

To my distress, I've had portions of my water bath tempered chocolate come out of temper during storage and then the whole packaged batch then needed to be checked before it was presented which meant unwrapping each little candy to check for bloom. 

I find the marble method too big a mess for myself. Eventually, the entire kitchen becomes covered with chocolate smears, not just the marble, the bench scrapper, the bowl and the spoons, but every towel and table and appliance too. I am such a klutz. Plus, it takes a feel for how the chocolate is behaving by its viscosity that I have not developed. 

I made these silicone molds ↓ because I couldn't find what I wanted and I looked at thousands of chocolate molds. Now someone does make hieroglyphic candy molds and sells them on eBay, and they're good looking molds too, but they are too large for my purpose and I already made these years before those appeared. Plus, it's like one mold for one glyph and not one mold for a set of glyphs like ordinary chocolate molds. It would take forever to crank out a batch like this. 

Here's how I made these molds. I poured a sheet of plaster about 1/2 inch thick, drew the glyphs, then carved away the background using dental tools. Then I made a reverse mold, one for each glyph, using food-safe silicone. Then I poured new plaster into each mold to produce a set of positive glyphs.  

I poured plaster into regular chocolate mint molds, square and round. Then I glued the plaster glyphs onto the plaster square and round mint shapes. I produced sets of eight for each glyph. 

Then I fashioned frames for the sets using plastic edging I bought in lengths at Home Depot. Cut the lengths and hot-glued them together into rectangular frames. Arranged the sets of mint-glyphs inside the frames and poured liquid food-grade silicone over the positive molds to create a reverse silicone mold for sets of glyphs. Each mold contains eight negatives of any given glyph. 

I had no idea what I was doing. It was all an experiment. I produced two full sets (of sets) of negative silicone molds, the first set using a slow drying silicone, and the second set using a faster drying silicone. The first set (yellow) is quite ugly and lumpy and poorly executed, the second full set (orange) is better but not perfect. I have been using both full sets ever since and the whole time I still think I could do a lot better were I to do it again. But now I am burned out on the whole business so I just stick with what I have and live with it. 

This chocolate tempering works better in cold weather because I can put the trays holding the molds outside on the patio instead of clearing space in the refrigerator. This is the fun part. One teaspoon of melted tempered chocolate goes into each depression in a mold. 

These are the paper wrappers for the candy ↓. There is a thin paper between each foil. So each paper is double. They are difficult to separate. I have a boat-load of these packages. Enough to last a few years. 

The candy is wrapped in batches so that the chocolate does not have time to drop out of temper, I mean rise out of temper. The rest is still outside keeping cold. As they are finished they're transferred to the refrigerator in a bowl and then boxed. The boxes are returned to the refrigerator and from there distributed as the need arises.