On Food and Cooking

the chocolate’s sugar and the cream’s water.
Center: A firm ganache, made with more
chocolate than cream, contains proportionally
more dry cocoa particles and less water.
Right: With time, the cocoa particles in a firm
ganache absorb water from the syrup and
swell. This can crowd the fat droplets so
tightly that they coalesce and the ganache
separates.
Tempering Chocolate The tempering process
consists of three basic steps: heating the
chocolate to thoroughly melt all of its fat
crystals, cooling it somewhat to form a new
set of starter crystals, and carefully heating it
again to melt the unstable crystals, so that
only desirable stable crystals remain. The
stable starter crystals will then direct the
development of the dense, hard crystal
network when the chocolate finally cools and
solidifies.
Unstable cocoa butter crystals are crystals
that melt relatively easily, which means at