Baking Bread, Cookies, Pies, Desserts & more… if you love baking it, share it!
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I’m a mediocre baker - the stuff tastes good, but prettiness is not where I excel.
I would get my mom mint chocolate truffles every year for Mother’s Day. During COVID, everything was shut down and so I couldn’t feasibly buy them, so I made my own. I kind of cobbled together a mish mash of a recipe for the inside part, and it has turned out pretty well. However, for the outside chocolate coating, I’ve never even attempted tempering the chocolate - until I started watching baking shows I didn’t even know what tempering chocolate was or why one would do it.
Anyways, so this year I decided I would try tempering the chocolate. Got the chocolate and set everything up. First roadblock: learned that neither of my thermometers goes below 100 F, and per the internet instructions, milk chocolate should be heated up to 100-110 F, then cooled to 85-87 F, then heated to 89-91 F.
So I mean, that could be the source of my issues…but I heated the chocolate appropriately, then removed from heat and added some extra chocolate to “seed” it and mixed til they melted and until the needle on the thermometer dropped a little below the 100 F marking, then put back on the double boiler set up and heat it a bit more until the needle moved up a bit.
Anyways, it was a total fail. I’ll have to try it again after buying a thermometer that actually goes low enough to use, but if anyone has any tips they would be much appreciated.
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As a fellow untrained novice in the world of chocolates, I’m impressed that you tried in the first place. I’ve never had a mind to try fooling with tempering chocolate, as it’s always seemed a complicated task to succeed at, while at the same time being incredibly easy to fail at. So kudos to you for having the patience and gumption to give it a go. If you figure it out I’d be interested to read about it. In the meantime, I’ll cross my fingers for your future success. 
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