Chocolate tree
A chocolate tree can decorate a birthday cake or become a delicious New Year's gift. To make it beautiful, you need to properly prepare the chocolate - temper it. Tempering is the process of heating and cooling chocolate to certain temperatures, resulting in the crystallization of cocoa butter. During the tempering process, the cocoa butter in chocolate changes into a stable form. This gives the chocolate its hardness, brittleness, and luster after cooling.
Ingredients
- 400–500 g chocolate (for a Christmas tree 10–12 cm high)
- cooking thermometer
- parchment
- coconut flakes
Cooking
Step 1
For the manufacture of chocolate products, it is convenient to use chocolate, which professional confectioners and chocolatiers work with. It is sold in the form of drops - callets. This chocolate does not need to be tempered, it is already made at the factory.
Step 2
Before starting work, ventilate the room, the temperature in the room should not exceed 20 °C. Break the chocolate into pieces, place in a bowl and put in a water bath. Checking the temperature with a food thermometer, bring the chocolate to 40-45°C over medium heat.
Step 3
Remove the container from the heat and place in a bowl of cold water. Stir the mass vigorously until smooth, 5-10 minutes, until the temperature of the chocolate mass drops to 27 ° C.
Step 4
Put the bowl of chocolate back into the water bath and bring the temperature of the mass to 32°C. Check that properly prepared chocolate at a mass temperature of 32–34 ° C, flowing from the spatula, should tear and form “icicles”. Remove from heat - chocolate is ready to go.
Step 5
On a sheet of parchment, draw circles of various sizes. Their number depends on the height of the future Christmas tree. Spoon the chocolate into the center of each circle and form the tiers of the future Christmas tree.
Step 6
While the mass is not frozen, sprinkle the edges with "snow" - coconut flakes. Separately, draw a small "top".
Step 7
Gently place the chocolate sheet in the refrigerator until it has completely set. Remove the stars from the paper. Put a drop of melted chocolate on the center of the largest star, "glue" a figure of a slightly smaller diameter. In the same way, carefully collect the entire Christmas tree.