Making chocolate is not possible without your bag of tools. Some of these tools may be easily secured off your kitchens, but if you are really hell-bent on becoming a home chocolatier, you may have to invest in some other equipment that is exclusively used only for chocolate making. The good thing is that there are a wealth of resources available to help you make the best use of whatever resources you have at the moment.
In fact, while these tools are highly recommended, you can do away with some of them at the expense of making a more manual operation of making chocolate, especially in the refinement stage. Here are the different tools that you need to make that homemade chocolate yummy and delectable.
Oven or Roaster
The oven or roaster is where you roast the beans, and you also use that to help achieve certain temperatures that you need during the tempering process. To say that tempering is a difficult task would be an understatement, since it requires hours and hours of measurement.
Blow Dryer
The blow dryer is essential for refining your chocolate. You need to make sure that the chocolate is evenly distributed as you refine it; it tends to change for the fluctuation in temperature and it may actually affect the overall quality of your final product. The blow dryer is quite easy to purchase and it also has uses outside the chocolate making kitchen.
Grinder
The grinder will help you especially when you are processing large amounts of chocolate beans. But if you are dealing with a small scale of chocolate making, you can actually do away with the grinder and crack the coffee beans manually or by hand. This is of course a welcome option for you if you have a grinder handy because it saves time and energy from cracking all those beans.
Bowl
The bowl is where you do most of the mixing of your ingredients. You will need a lot of bowls if you are making large amounts of chocolate for yourself and for your guests. When you are dealing with liquefied chocolate, you may need large bowls or other containers. It will also be very helpful if you have containers that are able to resist heat so that it will not affect the quality of your chocolate making even if it is subjected to high temperatures.
Spatula
The spatula helps mix the chocolate properly. It can also come in handy if you are doing taste tests although the next item may do better for this particular purpose.
Spoon
The spoon is handy for testing the taste of the chocolates. It helps you determine what has the optimum taste for varying temperatures and stages of your chocolate beans. From the moment that it is in bean form up to the moment that it is in liquid form, your spoon can be used to test the chocolate quality and taste.
Concher or Refiner
The refiner will help you achieve that rich creamy texture that most commercial chocolates have. If you have a concher, you will have saved yourself lots of minor work and it will actually help you do other activities while you wait for your chocolate to be processed.
Thermometer
The thermometer is especially important when you are tempering your chocolates. You need to be able to find a good thermometer so that it can handle the varying temperatures that will be required when you temper your chocolate. It will also be very useful if your thermometer reacts quickly or has a high temperature constant so that you can easily note the changes in temperature and alter your approach accordingly.