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I poured some undertempered chocolate into molds (as practice). Out of the molds, the exterior of the shells were glossy, clear, and hard as is well-tempered chocolate. The interior streaked terribly.

I suppose the polycarbonate/chocolate surface interaction is preventing exterior streaking. Any explanations?

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  • What do you mean by "undertempered"?
    – Aaronut
    Feb 9, 2011 at 18:54
  • Chocolate that I marbled a good portion of, but that I didn't thoroughly mix in with the rest of the chocolate so full seeding didn't occur.
    – rxmnnxfpvg
    Feb 9, 2011 at 19:58
  • How long have they been out of the molds? Feb 10, 2011 at 2:09
  • About one day .
    – rxmnnxfpvg
    Feb 10, 2011 at 3:00

1 Answer 1

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First of all, if by marbling you mean spreading chocolate on a slab, then your chocolate may be tempered. If you heated the chocolate properly and slabbed a good portion of it then when you add the slabbed chocolate back in, it will temper all of the chocolate. Your "problem" may be that the chocolate was actually tempered.

I'm also a little confused about how you are judging the interior to be out of temper. Other than the "snappiness", the quality of the interior chocolate is almost never used to judge temper. If you could provide a picture of what the inside and outside looks like that would be very helpful.

Aside from that, there are a few possibilities:

  • How long did you wait before judging the temper of the outside? Chocolate may not show signs of streaking for up to 24 hours.
  • Polycarbonate molds when used and, more importantly, washed correctly will build up a layer of cocoa butter. This layer of cocoa butter may help encourage the chocolate to form the correct crystals (temper).
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  • Unfortunately I already filled it with ganache so I can't take before/after shots. I waited 3 days before removing the chocolate from the molds (had other things to do); it has since been about 3 more. Interesting second point. How do you know this?
    – rxmnnxfpvg
    Feb 10, 2011 at 3:03
  • This thread has a ton of information about all kinds of molded chocolate work. I'm pretty sure there is a discussion of the cocoa butter thing somewhere there. forums.egullet.org/index.php?/topic/… Feb 11, 2011 at 21:29

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