Oh! Very Good! Inspired by Vosges Haut Chocolat, I mixed bacon into my 60% dark chocolate. I’d say there were about 2-3 slices of bacon which I cooked until completely crunchy. (95% Fat Free Turkey Bacon is my favorite!) Then I used my mini food processor to grind the bacon to a fine ground. I melted about 5 ounces of chocolate. I poured the melted concoction onto a sheet of textured plastic… Look what happened! It is textured! It came out perfect! I was so excited! This is by far the best bang for the buck chocolate tool I have gotten. The texture sheet was under $2… and look at how pretty my snapped slab chocolate is! Yippie! I had to take the picture right away. I was thrilled! See Textured Sheets
This was my first time officially tempering chocolate. I used the Ghiradelli 60% Dark Chocolate. I can get it at my supermarket. I had to temper it twice because I brought the temperature up too high. It was more time consuming than I would have liked. I am considering getting a dedicated piece of marble for faster tempering. I have marble countertops, but I like being able to wash the tempering board over the sink. I may look into this a little farther. (You can read about tempering chocolate on my blogroll. It isn’t too hard… but it is a bit of a pain. Chocolate is more complicated than people might think.)
I also have been using the Bada Bing Bada Boom chocolate melts which does not need tempering. It tastes plenty good and it is a great pleasure to work with. Fast! No nonsense! Melt it and pour, or dip! However, there is a certain appeal to using very good chocolate. But, it does cost more and needs to be tempered. I’m sure I’ll get better at tempering the chocolate. And, I’ll keep using Bada Bing Bada Boom Chocolate, too. Depends on the recipe.