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at Fri, 15 Oct 2004 01:59:13 GMT in
> ,
(LIsa) wrote :

>Hi! I am hoping someone can help me because my patience is running out.
> I am trying to Chocolate Coat my Homemade Ice Cream Bars and the
>chocolate is cracking as it cools on the ice cream. I am using Merkens
>Dark Chocolate and I am melting in 1 Tbsp. of Crisco per Cup of
>chocolate. I am using a Glass Bowl over a pot...water is not touching
>the bottom of the bowl. I am taking the pot off the burner once it
>starts to steam and I am taking the bowl off of the pot once the
>chocolate and Crisco are melted.
>
>I am not sure what I am doing wrong and I hope someone can help me.

First of all, I recommend you not add Crisco. It's an iffy way of trying to
avoid having to temper the chocolate and also diminishes the flavour
quality. Better to temper the chocolate.

Second, I suspect, that, Crisco addition notwithstanding, the chocolate
isn't tempering right and this will lead to all sorts of problems. In order
to temper melted chocolate (without addition of Crisco) what you need to do
is pour about half of it out onto a marble slab or other cool, nonporous
surface, spade it around with a metal spatula or palette knife until it
just starts to solidify, quickly scrape it back into the rest of the melted
chocolate, and stir until smooth and glossy (not too long).

Third, I suspect you're trying to put on too thick of a layer of chocolate
at the outset. Especially with ice cream, you want to put on thin layers
because otherwise you will get differential cooling (the inside, next to
the ice cream, cools faster than the outside) and that causes cracking as
well. If you want to make thick layers, you'll need to multicoat, and this
is also difficult because for a second layer, you need to prevent *all*
surface condensation (very difficult to do with frozen stuff)

Fourth, what is the orientation of your bars as you coat them, and how are
you coating them? A lot of problems can come in here. Generally you need to
dip all the bars at once if possible, and hang them vertically for the
shell to harden. If you dip the bars one at a time, the chocolate in the
bowl tends to go out of temper very fast because each ice cream bar cools
the chocolate a lot, unless you have a very large volume of chocolate
you're dipping into. Pouring the chocolate over the bars is easier and
minimises the problem of losing temper, but it's hard to get a uniform coat
and there's no way to coat all sides at the same time.

Fifth, what is the temperature of the ice cream? If it's not block-solid
frozen (below 0 F / -18 C), the warm chocolate can melt the ice cream at
the boundary. Then ice cream and chocolate shrink in towards the center,
developing cracking in the process.

Sixth, do you have an exact formulation for the Merckens you're using?
Merckens make many dark chocolates in many formulations and which
formulation you have will make a difference in result. Not limiting
yourself to Merckens, what you want is a high-fluidity, high-cocoa-butter
formulation. There are formulations specifically designed for coating ice
cream. These are, naturally, the best.

The process will be made a lot easier if you buy continuous-tempering
machine with reasonable capacity (e.g. Revolation X3210). These devices
keep the chocolate at the proper temper throughout the process, which is
half the battle. Then you can rig up some sort of hanging device so you can
dip all the bars in one motion and them hang them to cool and you will
probably get better results.

As if it weren't clear enough, understand that chocolate-coating ice cream
and frozen novelties is an extremely difficult, technically involved
process, especially in a home setting. It's not impossible, but you need to
be aware that's it's not an obvious, just-melt-the-chocolate-and-coat-the-
ice-cream, thing. In other words, you have to decide what your level of
interest and dedication is to this project. If it's something you would
like to do fairly strongly, and are willing to experiment for a while with
the process, you can succeed fairly well. If, on the other hand, it's
something that just seemed like a fun thing to try and that you're hoping
to be able to whip up in a couple of seconds, abandon the project now
before you start tearing out your hair. There was a recent thread on
basically the same subject. Look it up to get additional info.
--
Alex Rast

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