Happy Shiny Chocolate

While creating a delicious confection is a culinary challenge, making chocolate that looks  shiny is actually quite a scientific process. The shiny chocolate we produce in our Bon Bons, Peanut Butter Cups, S'mores—and all of our confections—is produced through a process called tempering. To temper chocolate is to heat then cool it to specific temperatures which allow the fat crystals in the chocolate to align, thus creating a luxurious shine. Each particular type of chocolate, be it dark, milk, or white, has its own tempering temperature. Dark chocolate requires a higher temperature than milk or white chocolate. Chocolate that is not tempered correctly will be soft, not crisp, and pale in color. This whitish color, called bloom, occurs because the chocolate's fat crystals are separated. In general, bloom affects only the appearance, not the flavor of chocolate. Bloom can occur during the tempering process, the cooling process, or later, during storage.

For most of our early years of chocolate making, our chefs tempered by hand, then we bought a small tempering machine to help us achieve more consistent shine. Recently, we invested in a larger, commercial machine which allows us to produce more shiny chocolate, faster. But even with an expensive, precision machine, if the ambient temperature, relative humidity, and/or cooling process fluctuates, bloom can occur. Alas!

Chocolate making is a creative, complex, and challenging art-form. In addition to making sure our chocolate is delicious, our Executive Chef spends a lot of time making sure your chocolate is tempered perfectly, so it has that shiny glow that makes you want to bite into it!

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