Mes Tablettes du Chocolat (Homemade Chocolate Bars)

So I have always wanted to make my own bar of chocolates because this is the only way that I can make sure that I have the perfect combination of chocolates and goodies in my very own bar of chocolate.  Have you ever gone to pick out a bar of chocolate in a store, especially these days with all the different combinations of single origin beans, single estates, 70%, 75%, 80% even 100% cocoa mass, with dried cranberries, nuts, no nuts, candied ginger, bacon, chili and other spice, I mean the list just go on and on but then I can never found the perfect bar that has everything that I want in it.  That is why I decided to make my very own and you can too.


To make your own bar of chocolates:

• 240g of mixture of couverture (percentage of cocoa is totally up to you) if you are mixing dark, and milk chocolate you might have to play around with the tempering temperature as dark and milk has a different sets of temperature for tempering
• As for the toppings, you can pretty much put anything that you like into the chocolate bar except anything that is perishable such as fresh fruits or anything that is moist and likely to have bacteria growth you definitely want to avoid those.  If you would like to add fruits, freeze dried ones and dried fruits are great.
• Most important part of making a bar of chocolate is tempering tempering and tempering
• Start by melting 2/3 of the 240g of chocolate (160g) in a mixing bowl
• Heat the chocolate to about 110-115F degree (please refer to the bottom of the post for the tempering chart for milk and white chocolate)
• Then add the remaining 1/3 of the couverture (80g) into the melted chocolate
• This is called the seeding method and this will bring the temperature of the chocolate down
• When the chocolate gets to 82-84F degree
• Put the chocolate into the microwave for 3 seconds increments to get the chocolate up to 88F degree
• Now the chocolate is tempered and you can pour them into the mold of your choice and nowadays there are a lot of different design molds you can choose from in specialty stores or online, I personally prefer the classic chocolate bars molds

• Once you pour the chocolate into the molds, tap the mold a few times to make sure all the air bubbles are out and level out the bars of chocolates
• Then you can add the toppings on to the bar and do understand that all the toppings are going to be at the bottom of the bars ones you flip them out of the molds just sprinkle the toppings evenly all over the bars
• Leave the bars to harden and set completely before trying to get them out of the mold because you do not want to waste all that work tempering your beautiful bars of chocolate just because you are eager to taste them
• It is best to leave them for a few hours in a cool and dry area
• Once  you get the bars out of the molds, you can eat them right away or you can wrap them with wax paper and package the bars as gifts. Usually that is the funnest part of the process.

Tempering Charts for different types of chocolates:

For dark chocolate:
Heat to 110-115F degree, then lower the temperature down to 82-84F degree then bring it back up to 88F degree (this is your working temperature)

For milk and white chocolate:
Heat to 100-110F degree, then lower the temperature down to 81-82F degree then bring it back up to 84-86F degree