Chocolate Cooking

Working with chocolate in the kitchen means working with cocoa butter — a fat with unique crystalline properties that give well-made chocolate its snap, gloss, and smooth melt. Cocoa butter can solidify into six different crystal forms, only two of which produce the qualities we want. Tempering is the controlled thermal cycle that selects for the right crystals. Beyond tempering, chocolate’s behavior when melted, combined with liquids, or baked into batters follows from its dual nature as a fat-continuous suspension of solid particles.