Chocolate lollipops, shards and the miracle of easy tempering with mycryo cocoa butter! With some hearts… :)

You know that annoying temperature curve where if you’re just a few degrees out you need to start tempering your chocolate all over again? Well with mycryo cocoa butter it’s so much easier to temper chocolate!!! We discovered this at a Meilleur du Chef workshop near Biarritiz a few months ago and since then my chocolate decorations have been quickly and conveniently produced. Not like before when I’d sometimes be heard mumbling ‘Oh dear, the chocolate isn’t hardening as it should! I could swear I followed that chocolate curve!’ And my softening chocolate shapes would be crying ‘Help! Someone please temper me properly!’ I’m sharing this with you so we can all have easy snappily shiny chocolate decorations that are happy and don’t need to live in the fridge. Yes you’ll have to find some mycryo cocoa butter but it’s totally worth the search and there are links below for ordering this magical stuff online. You just melt your chocolate to a maximum temperature, allow to cool to another specific temperature, stir in a very small amount of mycryo cocoa butter, cool a short time again then use. Oh the relief and joy. Hurray!

Chocolate lollilops – easy tempering with mycryo cocoa butter

By the way, some of the extra shiny lollies were sprayed with edible gold glitter.

But what’s mycryo cocoa butter?

It’s 100% cocoa butter obtained through roasting and grinding cocoa beans, which is then frozen at very low temperatures to produce a dry powder. It makes tempering chocolate very easy and you just add 1% (according to le Meilleur du Chef) or 2% (according to Callebaut) to your correctly melted chocolate.

There’s information on mycryo cocoa butter on the Meilleur du Chef website, where you can also order it – they do international deliveries. It’s also available on Amazon where the reviewers confirm how easy it makes tempering chocolate but warn you to be careful about the expiry date. I’m still using mine although the expiry date was late last year. Do check the expiry dates on the packaging if you order some.

There are other uses for mycryo cocoa butter when frying or grilling as Callebaut’s website mention – they also call this product revolutionary! I agree – it has revolutionised my chocolate tempering: it’s now a less messy, happier and easier process! Hurray again! Vive le mycryo cocoa butter!!! 🙂

How to do it

Decorating stuff – prepare all the materials for your chocolate decorations.

Plastic sheets (food quality) – or cut up some disposable piping bags like I did (see photo further down).
For chocolate lollilops: set sticks out on the plastic sheets. Have a teaspoon ready.
For chocolate shards: have a small or large offset spatula knife ready to spread the chocolate.
For both lollies and shards: have sprinkles, coloured chocolate drops, chopped nuts and candied fruit, etc. ready to sprinkle on.
For chocolate curls: prepare thin strips of plastic and objects to hold down the ends. You can also use a rolling pin or round handles to curl your chocolate around.

Tempering

First get a thermometre, probe or preferably laser, as there’s no need to touch the chocolate so it’s less messy.
Make sure you use couverture chocolate. If you want really delicious decorations get good-quality stuff like Valrhona Jivara.
Check the bowl you’re going to melt your chocolate in is very clean and dry – all your utensils must be dry.
Weigh 1% of the mycryo butter so it’s ready to add. To calculate: 100g/3.5oz chocolate + 1g/1/2 teaspoon mycryo cocoa butter; 200g/7oz chocolate + 2g/1 teaspoon mycryo cocoa butter OR 1kg/35.27oz chocolate + 10g/5 tsp mycryo cocoa butter.

Instructions for tempering couverture milk chocolate are on the Meilleur du Chef website in French here, for dark chocolate here and white chocolate here. Maybe they’ll translate into English in the future but their step-by-step photos should still help you.

These are the instructions for tempering white and milk chocolate.

Melt your chocolate on a bain marie (or use a microwave, melting in 20 second bursts, stirring well between each burst and checking the temperature).
Make sure your chocolate reaches a temperature of 40ºCelsius/104ºFahrenheit but never goes over 45ºCelsius/113ºFahrenheit. Take it off the bain marie as soon as it gets near and give it a good stir then if necessary return 5 seconds or so at a time, stir and check the temperature.
Once off the heat (and off the bain marie) let the chocolate cool to 34ºCelsius/93ºFahrenheit. Sprinkle on the mycryo cocoa butter and wait a few seconds as it melts then stir in to combine.
Wait for the chocolate to cool to 28ºCelsius/82ºFahrenheit. Use immediately. If it starts hardening then just heat up again a few seconds or so and stir well until the temperature warms back up to 28ºCelsius/82ºFahrenheit and the chocolate is smooth again.

For dark chocolate the process is the same except let it cool not to 28ºC but to 31ºCelsius/88ºFahrenheit then use immediately.

Decorations – work quickly before your chocolate hardens.

For lollipops get a good blob around your stick so it stays on. Swirl with a teaspoon leaving some gaps to create a less ‘solid’ look. Make sure you add sprinkles or colourful chocolate drops quickly before the tempered chocolate dries.

For shards spread to and fro thinly on plastic sheet. If you want to add sprinkles or nuts do it quickly now. When it starts going less shiny, you touch it with your finger and when it doesn’t stick cut shapes like triangle-style shards. Some more info is on my page in the basics section: making thin decorative shapes with tempered chocolate.

For curls – also spread to and fro thinly on the plastic sheet and quickly curl up the sheet and fix so it stays in position. Sorry, didn’t get photos of the ones I made for the Mandarin log cake.

But here’s a couple of great youtube videos showing various chocolate decoration techniques (they use transfer sheets but you can use plain plastic sheets). As the man says, you can also use Candy Melt-type chocolate if you don’t want to temper.

Cool huh? It all works great on plain plastic sheets (with brightly-coloured white chocolate for example) but maybe I’ll order a colourful transfer sheet too! 🙂

I’m just so happy there’s a way to make chocolate decorations that consistently harden with very little fuss or time. Maybe tempering chocolate with mycryo cocoa butter can be useful for you too!