Ask a Vegan Baker

Hi sweet witch!

Chocolate solidification is extremely temperamental business. I haven't been lucky enough to try the Sweet William white chocolate yet but I did check out the ingredients. It does seem to have enough cocoa butter which is extremely important in order for chocolate to solidify correctly. The most important variable in making chocolate solidify as hard as possible, is making sure you temper your chocolate before you use it so the cocoa butter crystallizes optimally. Tempering sounds daunting at first, but it's really pretty easy. Once you do it the first time you'll understand how it's not worth the effort of working with chocolate if you're not going to temper. Tempering is the difference between hard, glossy cake balls and gummy jagged cake balls. If you forego tempering you can get all sorts of soft, gummy chocolate problems.

Tempering is all about encouraging the fat to solidify, also known as crystallize, a specific way that results in dense, not too jagged crystals that pack together tightly. The result is chocolate that is dense, smooth and breaks with a snap. Tempered chocolate is also more resistant to bloom which is when fat crystallizes on the surface of the chocolate that resembles white dust.

There are 6 known fat crystal types in cocoa butter: Forms I, II, III, IV, V and VI. In tempering, the specific desired type of crystals, known as Form V crystals, melt at a temperature of 90F (32C) for dark chocolate and about 87F (31C) for white chocolate. We encourage, or seed these tiny crystals into our chocolate by first melting all other undesirable forms that melt at other temperatures. The crystal forms that melt at lower temperatures than Form V are Form I through Form IV and the crystal form that melts above Form V is Form VI. Bringing the mixture to a temperature of 120F (49C) melts all Forms. Think of this step as hitting the reset button on your chocolate so now you have a clean slate as far as the fat crystals are concerned. Now you need to bring the chocolate down to a low temperature so all of the fat Form types have been initiated. Bringing the temperature down to about 79F (26C) ensures this. We then increase the temperature until the Form V crystals have been melted which is 87F (31C) before pouring the chocolate. After the chocolate is poured into the mold it's important to let it sit at room temperature and not immediately be placed in the refrigerator. This ensures the Form V crystals have time to develop.

In summary: bring the mixture up to 120F (49C) while whisking frequently. Remove the bowl containing the mixture from the double boiler. Place the mixture in the refrigerator periodically and whisk occasionally to allow the mixture to reduce to 79F (26C). Now place the mixture back on the double boiler and bring it up to 87F (31C). If you overshoot and the temperature goes past 89F (32C), start the tempering process over.

Tempering your chocolate should allow you to create gorgeous cake balls that have that characteristic snap when you bite into them. If you give this a shot, let me know how it works out!