Chef Renee: Chocolate, Hot Tips to Dip!

{Savory Tv is pleased to welcome Chef Renee Fontes as a delicious guest poster. Renee is a restaurant chef and caterer, and enthusiastically volunteered to help us out with our recent chocolate obsession! In our featured post today, she tells us how to make the perfect chocolate sauce for dipping, including a fail safe secret for tempering. For more delicious recipes, tips, and photos from Renee, visit her site here.}

Hot Tips For Dipping Chocolate

Temper, temper!  There is a trick to getting chocolate to coat and harden on anything you want dipped in its sweet, silky, delight.  The trick is called tempering.  Follow this easy method and you will be an expert at creating chocolate dipped fruit such as strawberries, raspberries or bananas,  nuts, candy or even bacon!

Chocolate becomes stable and glossy when it is properly tempered by a process of melting it to the right temperature and cooling it to the right temperature.  Without this process it’s impossible to create candy and chocolate decorations. When you buy chocolate it is already in temper, but melting it knocks it back out.  To get it back into the “zone” there is the classic way and a quick temper method I like to use.

The quick method I found in Food Lover’s Companion by Sharon Tyler Herbst ( love that book!) works and you don’t have to have a marble slab in your kitchen to participate.  Melt two thirds of the chocolate to be tempered to 115 degrees add in the one third remaining stir constantly until smooth and 89 degrees.  Spring for some great chocolate, chop into small pieces place in a double boiler and melt over simmering water. Keep a eye on the temp if it starts slipping under 89 degrees set it back over the water to maintain 89 temperature and stir occasionally.

Now you are ready to dip! Make sure your items are clean and dry. Really dry. Use tongs or skewers to lower items into chocolate allow excess chocolate to drip back into bowl. Put parchment paper down and place dipped goodies on it to set. Make sure items do not touch are they will become one when cool.

After you get good at fruit and candy, you can dip anything!  You could even propose with a chocolate covered engagement ring!  Chocolate is fun and you may lick the bowl after you are finished.

– Chef Renee Fontes

– Chef Renee on Twitter

{Chocolate obsessed like us? Visit more delicious chef chocolate recipes here.}