Thanks to a well meaning neighbor, I am now the less than proud owner of 8lbs of Nestle Chocolate Chips. Not only do I not really love making cookies, Nestle Chocolate Chips came in dead last in a recent Cook's Illustrated taste test of chocolate chips.
I've never tempered chocolate, but that's something I'd like to get into.
I could swear that I read somewhere that real but "bad" chocolate can be improved and tempered after adding 10% cocoa butter. Is that true? For the life of me I can't find the source for that info.
If it is true, would more cocoa butter be better? I know that couverture chocolate can contain up to 40% cocoa butter.
I understand that no amount of cocoa butter will turn Nestle chips into Callebaut, but I would like to practice the process of tempering with the cheap chocolate that I already own before I spend real money on fine chocolate. I can get a good price on organic, food grade cocoa butter.
Ingredient list of Nestle Semi-Sweet Morsels: Semi-sweet chocolate (sugar, chocolate, cocoa butter, milkfat, soy lecithin, natural flavors)
The nutritional information says that the total fat is 4 grams in a 14 gram serving. That makes the chips 29% fat. If I'm not missing anything, that means that they are at least 15% cocoa butter, probably more. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Best Answer
Keep in mind that if you mess up tempering of 'fine chocolate', you can always heat it back up and do it again.
All you are doing is trying to make one of the three types of chocolate crystals the dominant one, and form the crystal lattice.
This article chocolate alchemy describes it. In practice, having a fast digital hand thermometer is really helpful since you can actually see the changes at the critical temperatures.
As far as the Nestle stuff goes, try practicing with them as they are. I'm afraid I can't advise to throw good cocoa butter into it. You may be able to get chocolate ice cream mileage from your 8lbs. Otherwise, just go ahead temper your favourite chocolate. Worst case, a badly tempered good chocolate still tastes great.