Matching Martini Madness: DIY Lemoncello

I have a confession: I have a lot of booze in my house, mostly because I’m an amateur mixologist with a weakness for interesting bottles and novel flavors. Plus I’m a bit of a shopoholic. Just slightly. Ahem.

(Do I worry about having all this booze around my daughter. Not at all. Shit, someone has to drink the stuff. Ha ha! I kid! She doesn’t like the taste. Besides, I don’t care if she tries it. Americans are so uptight, geez.)

Anyway, I’ve finally made it through a few of these bottles and I liked the taste enough to replace them. But I’m also a cheapazz bitch because I spent all my money on shoes and survival goods for the winter (more about that later; YOU ARE hoarding canned goods for the mid-October Apocalypse, yes?)

(Ignore the limes; they were for a different project)

So why not make my own? Sure. This ought to be a blast! My first project: Homemade lemoncello.

Ingredients:

Lemon

Sugar

Vodka

saucepan

large jar

strainer

decorative bottles

Wash lemons. Peel them with peeler or grater, but only use the yellow part. Put peels in large jar and fill it with vodka. Let several weeks pass - and by that I mean a few months. Shake the jar weekly.

Of course the mix will need to be strained. I did it twice: Once with an ordinary strainer to get the big chunks out, and then again with a coffee filter so that the result would be clear and not cloudy. You’ll see I put a wine strainer over the coffee filter so that the filter would not rip. From what I’ve seen of other lemoncellos some people like it cloudy and a little thick, but I thought all that lemon floating around was just weird. I also realized that commercial grade lemoncellos are kind of artificial looking. The neon color strikes me as radioactive and I wonder about that. Maybe a drop of food coloring would suffice if you’re going for the commercial look, but I didn’t bother with it.

(See what a difference double straining makes! This extra step is optional.)

Make a sugar syrup with sugar and a little water. Just heat it in a saucepan until it runs clear and add to the lemon vodka. Measurements? You’re kidding right? You can wing it and do just fine; I didn’t use much sugar in mine because I think commercial lemoncellos are too sweet. I do not have a sweet tooth. But if you want to follow a recipe look here! Pour your new lemoncello in some pretty bottles and store them, or give them as gifts!

(Add a little lemoncello to your vodka martini for that citrus kick)

HPS Test Kitchen: A Berry Good Sammich

This sandwich was made two toaster waffles, spread with store bought cheesecake filling and piled high with strawberries. What a glorious mess it was to eat!

HPS Test Kitchen: Manna From Heaven

Many things suck about gluten sensitivity, but the absolute WORST thing to get used to (once you no longer crave sandwiches at lunchtime) is not being able to partake of that warm semolina bread they place on your table at nice restaurants. Sadly, the gluten free breads at the specialty stores are poor substitutes for the real thing. If you’ve been a celiac for a long time you know just how BAD rice bread tastes: It’s dry; it crumbles in your hand when you bite into it, and it’s yukky.

Well, those days of feeling deprived are over!

BUY A BREAD MACHINE. With a gluten-free loaf setting. You will NEVER regret it.

Whole Foods sells gluten free grains and bread mixes, but I save money by ordering mine in bulk from Amazon.com. The above photograph is of the loaf I made with Bob’s Red River Mill Gluten Free Whole Grain Bread Mix. It tastes like a mild rye and has chewy seeds in it and it’s to die for. YUM!

HPS Test Kitchen: Patriot Pudding

I’m excited because I found American flags at Target that were actually made in America. WHOOPIE! So I bought one.

I might have a Fourth of July party, if for no other reason than to inspire myself to 1) finally clean this damn house; 2) show off the fact that I CAN, in fact, grill, and 3) feature my new favorite dessert, which happens to be red, white and blue.

It’s not “just” vanilla pudding with berries: This is an ALL organic venture with real sugar, cream and vanilla and OMG you can taste the difference. This is die-and-go-to-heaven good, and this is how you do it.

Vanilla Pudding

1/3 cup sugar
3 Tablespoons cornstarch
¼ teaspoon salt
2½ cups half and half (I use cream)

1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
vanilla bean if you can find it

Mix sugar, cornstarch and salt; granually blend in milk. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, till mixture thickens. Cook 2 or 3 minutes more. Add vanilla and powdered vanilla bean. Pour in SMALL dessert glasses. Remember, this stuff is RICH.

Berry Sauce

• 1 cup Blueberries
• 1 cup Raspberries
• 1 cup Strawberries
• 1/2 cup sugar

Mix berries and sugar and let sit for an hour or two. The sugar will break down the berries into a sauce. Pour berry sauce over the pudding. Chill. Garnish with real whipped cream and extra berries to make it extra-special.

Kittyprint Tuesday: RAWr

(Kitty likes her meat RAWR!)

I used to hate to cook. Just thinking about cooking made me feel tired and depressed; even when I was a stay-at-home mom I couldn’t bring myself to do more than the minimum.

“What’s for dinner?” My ex would say.

“I dunno, whatcha making?”

I had a mental block against cooking because I always had the feeling my mother hated it. I don’t know if it’s true; it just seemed such a repetitive chore. Same with my hardworking grandmothers who spend their whole lives in their kitchens and their gardens: By the time they cleaned up from one meal it was time to start the next. Had I lived a life like theirs I think I might have stuck my head in an oven set to “broil.”

(Kittyprint prep bowls found at a kitchen outlet)

But outdoor cooking is different, right? It’s fun, like camping. Believe it or not I went to survivalist school as a kid; in Minnesota this is what they call a “school trip.” I’m glad I did it: I can start a fire in the rain using only one match (hint: use birch bark).

Also, my first long-term boyfriend, whom I’ll call Tipi Guy, taught me how to catch and scale fish. He was a Norwegian lumberjack who wanted to be a Lakota native in the worst way, and through our work on the local reservations I learned how to cook “Indian style,” which in the 1980’s meant frybread with canned blueberries, grilled walleye, and wild rice soup.

(Marinated London Broil)

Tipi-guy hated that I loved my meat rare, and by rare I mean RAW. Once I spent almost fifty dollars on two antelope steaks and ate mine with my bare hands before he even lit the campfire. I got really bad marks on that day. Submissive “native wife” was a job I didn’t want and failed the interview for anyway, especially after the flyfishing “incident” that I won’t go into. Suffice it to say he married the girl who didn’t try to kill him.

That was the last time I cooked on a regular basis. Bunny got her dietary variety from living in three places: Mine, her father’s and her grandmother’s. It’s a good thing because otherwise Bunny’s idea of cooking would be instant oatmeal.

But I digress! I fired up a grill tonight for the first time in five years! Usually I leave the grilling to whatever manly man crosses my threshold. I tried to light my gas grill once on my own and I practically blew up the neighborhood because I left the lid on when I pushed the ignition. I got rid of that menace in favor of a little Coleman charcoal grill (a gift from my stepfather). It sat around for over a year gathering dust. But looky! My first try, with a London Broil I’d been marinating in a red pepper rub for two days. I didn’t time it or anything and it STILL turned out perfect. I paired it with a mess of greens pulled right out of my garden. Mmmm yummy

The World According to Monsanto: Down the Memory Hole

If you haven’t started your veggie garden yet I think you’re crazy but there IS still time! This is my front yard, because my back yard is too shady for a serious garden. Those bushes behind the seedlings are purple and pink flowering heather.

Anyway, I’m not doing another post just to show off my garden. I just found out that . . . .

“The world according to Monsanto” is in danger of disappearing from the internet!

Monsanto is siccing their lawyers on every web page that has shown this movie. YouTube has already yanked it under threat of lawsuit. This link may be one of the last places you can see this movie before it is banned, so go! Go! Go see!

Privatisation Making Seeds Themselves Infertile

Seeds were once for ever. After harvest, a few from the crop would be planted for the following year, and so it went on. Now, biochemical industry giants are making seeds themselves infertile. You sow them this year, and that’s it. For next year’s crop, you need brand new seeds — you would have to buy them, of course. Twenty-five years ago, there were at least 7,000 seed growers worldwide, and none of them controlled more than one percent of the global market. Today, after a takeover spree, 10 major biochemical multinationals, including Monsanto, DuPont-Pioneer, Syngenta, Bayer Cropsciencie, BASF, and Dow Agrosciences, control more than 50 percent of the seeds market.

Hat Tip: What Really Happened

All my seedlings are hybrids this year because I didn’t buy heirloom seeds in time for my heirloom garden. Next year, next year! This year I have rhubarb, watermelon, three different pepper plants, several varieties of tomato, cucumber, zucchini, several varieties of lettuce, broccoli, and cauliflower. Next on the to do list: Beanstalks, but I need to set something up for them to climb first . . .

Late Night Update: Field studies find lower productivity with GM seeds

Genetic modification actually cuts the productivity of crops, an authoritative new study shows, undermining repeated claims that a switch to the controversial technology is needed to solve the growing world food crisis.The study - carried out over the past three years at the University of Kansas in the US grain belt - has found that GM soya produces about 10 per cent less food than its conventional equivalent, contradicting assertions by advocates of the technology that it increases yields.

Another Perfect Day

What a beautiful day to play in the garden! I’m planning a huge bulb garden in my back yard, setting up the space and turning the dirt so that it will be bulb-friendly in the fall. Not only will it be beautiful next spring, but it will get rid of that part of my lawn I’ve always had trouble with. It’s too shady and acidic to grow much more than moss in the summertime, and I’m tired of fighting with it. When it comes to gardening I’ve learned we need to allow the earth to tell us what to do, not the other way around.

I love Pharm Solutions’ organic pesticides; I pay retail for them at my local whole foods market. I’m a sucker for brightly colored and coordinating bottles of this-and-that. However, if you’re broke or just cheap, as I am sometimes, you can make your own insecticidal soaps for practically nothing. The fatty acids in insecticidal soaps are lethal to exoskeletal beings.

Homemade Insecticidal Soap

1 quart plastic spray bottle

1tablespoon Dr. Bronner’s fatty-acid soap (not a detergent!) One tablespoon soap with one quart water is a good ratio; too much soap is bad for the plant.

1 tablespoon spice such as cayenne pepper, horseradish, garlic or ginger (optional, strong smelling things repel insects)

1 tablespoon vegetable oil (optional, helps the solution stay wet longer, be sure to shake well)

1 quart water

Notes from Venus has a post on how to make several different kinds of homemade insecticides. Have at it, but remember: Don’t scare the bees!

HPS Test Kitchen: Raspberry Gelato

Raspberry Gelato

1 bag of frozen raspberries
1 cup sugar or sugar syrup (adjust to taste)
1 blender

This is so easy to make that it’s almost laughable that it never occurred to me to try this myself. Why do I buy this stuff at the supermarket, again?

Bunny invented this little concoction and it’s insanely good. Very tart, which I like. No funny ingredients to decipher. There are only two ingredients, if you’ve not already noticed. If you don’t have sugar syrup (do NOT us corn syrup!) you will need a small double boiler to melt your granulated sugar without burning it.

Toss the ingredients in a blender, set it on medium high and start blending. Pour into a covered dish and freeze for an hour or so before eating. Viola!

HPS Test Kitchen: Get Stoned, Make Pizza

No, sillies, I’m not doing drugs: I just bought my first pizza stone!I thought it would be expensive but it was only fifteen bucks and what a difference! If you like a crispy crust on your pizzas you cannot live la dolce vita unless you have a good baking stone. I found mine at Sur La Table (they only have the bigger one online) but you may also find baking stones at Target. It’s time for me to start experimenting with a few different pizza recipes . . .

Ode to Pizza

Yeast pillow
sailing
through the green
oregano air, floats
down into the bubbling
rumors of tomatoes,
the gossip
of basil and bay leaves,
stretches at the red
aromatic massage,
dreams in layers
of mozzarella, the black
oval dozings of olives
humming in the sun,
dough that naps
in the glow
of laughter,
round appetite,
cicular carpet
shrugging
at knives and forks,
tattles
in many tongues,
international traveler
riding red pepper cloud-currents,
cruising the seas,
rising
to grins
that pull the melted
cheese, queso, fromage, kaas, ser, keshi, ocha,
queijo, käse, panir, nailao, queixo,
formatge, brinzeu, cascaval, bú, formagio
from country
to country,
wrapping around us and
our gold floating globe.

- Pat Mora

HPS Test Kitchen: Pizza Pizza!

Guess how long it’s been since I ate a slice of pizza. Several months? Try several years! However, now that Whole Foods has a gluten-free bakery I can buy pizza crusts and use them to make my own small pizzas. Here’s how I did it:

HPS Gluten-Free Pizza

1 Gluten-Free pizza crust
Leftover spaghetti sauce (enough to cover the crust)
About 3/4 cup of mozzarella, shredded
About 10 pepperoni slices
1/2 cup of pineapple, cut into bite-size pieces
A dash of red pepper
1 tsp oregano
Ground black pepper

Pour and spread the leftover spaghetti sauce on the pizza crust. Sprinkle on the red pepper flakes, ground black pepper and oregano. Add the cheese, layer on the pepperoni, and slip in the pineapple pieces wherever you can.

If you like a soft crust, put the pizza on a round pan and cook at about 375 degrees for about 14 minutes. For a crispier crust you may place the pizza directly on the oven rack. Just be careful about taking it out when it’s done! Use a timer.

I used Rao’s Homemade Southern Italian Pepper & Mushroom Sauce because it’s made with fresh vegetables, olive oil and white wine. There is no corn syrup in this sauce, and it’s also sugar and gluten free!!! I used organic dairy and uncured pepperoni made from pigs that were better fed than most: Their feed had no hormones and no animal products. Consequently, this pizza was a wee bit spendy, but since this was my first slice in years I went with the best! Next time I make pizza I am going to try to find fresh organic mozzarella cheese. Ooooooh that would be good.

HPS Test Kitchen: Grilled Steak With Coffee Rub

(The soup/salad bowl is “Garden Harvest” part of the Mikasa’s Intaglio collection)

I haven’t stopped cooking! I just haven’t made anything worth writing about until now. This time we have a winner! I found this in my Intercourses cookbook; the recipe calls for lamb chops, but since I don’t eat babies I stuck with plain old mooooo. Sorry, Bessie.

Grilled Steak With Coffee Rub

1 tsp kosher salt
3/4 tsp coffee beans, milled very fine
3/4 tsp ground pepper
3/4 tsp garlic powder
3/4 tsp sweet paprika
3/4 tsp dried rosemary
3/4 tsp dried thyme
2 steaks, 3/4 to 1 inch thick

Thoroughly combine the dry ingredients and rub them on both sides of the steak. Cover with plastic wrap and let stand at room temperature for 1 to 2 hours. For best results cook on an outdoor grill, 5 minutes per side for medium rare, turning once.

I like to cut mine up and eat it with my salad.

A Month of Chocolate: Easy Dessert

Piles of unopened mail mock me. I’m at PMDD Threat Advisory Code Red but at 200mg of Zoloft I’m doing much better this month. I’m only feeling tired and useless and my sex drive is shot to hell. Considering the alternative, I’ll take it!

I won’t be able to give you last weekend’s story in real time but remember: It took me several weeks to write the Porn Queen Chronicles! I’ll write this one as soon as I can; the story is still developing in some very interesting and unexpected ways. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, it’s the last evening of our Month of Chocolate!

I discovered the joys of feasting on chocolate and wine by accident. It turns out the combination is quite good! I especially love chocolate covered raspberries with a dark burgundy or merlot, mmmmmmmmmmm.

Of course, the best combination is a very dark chocolate with a deep red wine. Both have fewer carbohydrates than your usual dessert/alcohol combinations, and both have plenty of antioxidants, so you may even convince yourselves that you’re eating healthily!

Wine experts have expressed their opinions on which wines taste best with chocolate, so here are a few:

 

Surf4wine in the UK recommends Muscat dessert wines.

Cocoavino in New York recommends Malbec, Shiraz, Grenache, and Banyuls, probably the same Banyuls recommended to me by a very excited sommelier at Corkscrewed. It’s a Vin Doux Naturel, a dessert wine (think vintage port) made exclusively with grenache noir grapes and fortified with grape spirit. I bought it and it was indescribably good, rich and mellow and unlike any wine I’d tasted before. Cocovino says it’s the hidden raspberry notes, but I don’t understand them: If it’s hidden, how may one taste it? If I had to describe it I suppose I’d call it “fruity,” but what it really is, I think, is “grapey.”

I also bought a medium-dry Madiera wine (Alvada Madiera) at Corkscrewed, supposedly an acquired taste but I acquired it quickly! It’s an oxidized wine (meaning, it’s already gone “bad”) used often in cooking. It tasted like raisins to me and as you know, raisins go very well with chocolate! It’s supposed to taste good slightly heated.

At LoveSicily, they found some interesting combinations: A Cinnamon-spiced chocolate with a sweet wine, and a chili-spiced chocolate with slightly dry Marsala (fortified) wine! They sound amazing!

. . . by far the most interesting was the combination between the chilli chocolate and an excellent quality marsala wine. You might think that marsala and chocolate is just too much sweetness together, however good marsala is anything but sickly sweet. It is a complex, slightly dry taste with an aftertaste that lingers on and develops in the mouth. This works well with the chocolate, which, after the initial sweetness, chilli then kicks in. The result on the pallet is, especially for a chocolate lover, quite an addictive combination.

So have I tried the Marsala/Chili-chocolate combination? Not yet, but I will! I have not found a chili-flavored chocolate that’s spicy enough yet. I might have to make my own!

A Month of Chocolate: Death By Chocolate

I had to translate this one from French before I could post it: It’s INSANE! It’s a Christmas dish but why reserve it for once a year? Please! This is probably a diabetes attack just begging to happen but trust me, you’ll die happy! Here:

Divine marchioness with the chocolate for Christmas

Consistent richness… without cholesterol nor sugar!

Topics cliquables: marchioness - Anne-Laure - chocolate - pot - food film - serves - OK for health (without cholesterol nor sugar) - Christmas

As you know it, I am with my third test of reconstitution of the “marchioness to the chocolate of Anne-Laure”

- to click here to see the first test
- to click here to see the second test

• The marchioness with the chocolate of Anne-Laure is characterized mainly by the fact that it does not contain a gram of added SUGAR (it contains only glucids of the chocolate).

• It almost does not contain CHOLESTEROL either: there is only black chocolate (not cholesterol), egg white (not of cholesterol) and a little butter (112,5 cholesterol Mg for a marchioness of 500 G, therefore brought back to a share it is almost null); I finally advise you to add to it a dessertspoon (10 ml) of fresh cream reduced to bind (almost no one out of cholesterol: one can speak about “traces”).

***

This time I did everything to perfection, i.e. instead of making a “test out of test-tube” or almost, I worked out a TRUE MARCHIONESS, in sufficient quantity to fill the best possible container (that which would give the best possible form: the shape of cake, all in all), and by applying me to each stage to obtain the best possible result (the smoothest chocolate, the purest egg white…).

I thus have, in the order:

1°) selected a true POT as it is necessary (500 ml) to make beautiful sections, and I papered it food plastic film:

(just a small council: to avoid panic with the release from the mould, pass a little oil on the walls of the pot before installing plastic film, it is what I will do the next time! A few moments ago, I failed to give up unmoulding it so much the plastic adhered to the pot… and then finally it came from a blow; but with oil the release from the mould certainly would be very facilitated)
2°) bought good chocolate (of Nestle with cocoa 70%). For a pot of 500 ml, one needed 270 G of BLACK CHOCOLATE For 70% which I put to melt all gently:

3°) before adding 45 G of FRESH BUTTER to it and whipping until obtaining a perfectly smooth mixture:

Mmmmmmmm…. it is already splendid, not?

4°) then I filtered, yes FILTERED 6 EGG WHITES in a metal strainer with fine grid (practical usual of the pastrycooks chiefs of 3-stars…).
At the beginning the white did not pass in my strainer in spite of my efforts to agitate it with a spoon, then I ended up understanding that it was necessary TO ACT AS LOWER PART of the strainer, while scraping with a blade of knife: in this way, that goes very quickly and the result is perfect. It does not remain any more in the strainer but the germs, the impurities and approximately 1 spoon of very thick white which does not want to pass. Beurk! To throw without remorse.

5°)… before beating them with the whip (by adding a salt pinch, and while beating patiently, without exciting themselves - one should not almost hear the noise of the whip on the walls, the goal not being to massacre our white but to make there enter of the air… and that takes time that that takes!) :

6°) Then, I incorporated the white snows about it with the molten chocolate. It is necessary well to beat, not to worry to break the white. What one wants, it is a perfectly smooth texture.

7°) to finish and add binder, I incorporated 1 large coffee spoon very full with THICK FRESH CREAM In 4%. Why not a little more? There, it is really as it is felt…

8°) I filled the pot and I covered it, then I put it at the refrigerator (Sunday 28 à11: 45):

9°)… We had patience to wait 3 days full…

… and today Wednesday 1 to 14 H, here is the RESULT:

It is beautiful, not?

It cuts out and is held very well (smooth knife, passed under very hot water and wiped well).

It releases a rather extraordinary chocolate perfume, and Jacques, Camille and me unanimously considered to be very aromatic, very suave, and really consistent and rich… but without heaviness: incredible. Ideal.
With the dessert, one fixes rather quickly because it is filling.
But it is felt that one “is not leaded”, and it is what I adore in a dessert. One leaves table rather light, but really the saturated papillae. “There is a life after the meal! ”, as somebody would say.

Impression of lightness confirmed by a observation chimico-housewife: I had piled up in the sink the knives used to cut the sections of marchioness, and the plates on which had tasted we it. All had dried.
While passing them under water, of only one blow of sponge or brush they were clean - what one does not obtain absolutely with preparations containing of the egg yolk and/or sugar: it is always necessary to let them soak before hoping to wash them easily.

***

Assessment: cheer… 20/20, if not more. I estimate myself finally satisfied.
My contract is filled: they is SUMPTUOUS to taste and it is (almost) good for health.

Why recommend it to you for Christmas? Because in my opinion it is definitely lighter than a log after turkey or the roe-deer with chestnuts, but that at the same time it is very satisfactory for the palate and makes it possible to finish a feast on a rich and refined note. Moreover, everyone likes the chocolate, not?
I am sure that a pot of 500 G is enough largely for 8 people (only adult or children because the teenagers, it is straightforwardly another species: the quantities can vary from 1 to 10!!!).

I prepared a few moments ago, just to have fun, a plate of marchioness of Christmas: brilliant, clinquante, kitsch…: -)))
(finally, I can make quite worse than that, but for you I remained reasonable)

I believe that one will remake oneself some like that…: -)

Good appetite with all!

A Month of Chocolate: Mad Scientist

(Wrist Exercises at the Lair of the Hedonistic Pleasureseeker)

There are so many chocolate martini recipes on the internet that I grew tired of looking for them, so I started making my own! Anything that tastes good with chocolate can be made a part of a vodka martini, so here are three recipes I tried during the month of February. The first is based loosely upon a suggestion in the little booklet that came with my new bottle of Chambord:

Raspberry Mochatini

1 1/2 shots chocolate flavored vodka
1 shot coffee liqueur (I use Starbucks because it’s not as sweet as Kahluha)
3/4 shot dark creme de cacao or chocolate liqueur
3/4 shot Chambord or raspberry liqueur
1 shot of chocolate syrup (optional)

 

Invisible Chocolatini

2 shots chocolate vodka
2 shots clear creme de cacao

 

Chocolate Orange Martini

1 1/2 shots vanilla vodka
1 1/2 shots Godiva white or dark chocolate creme liqueur
1 shot Grand Marnier

(Vintage boudoir slippers, circa 1950ish)

A Month of Chocolate: Skinny Dipping

(Bunny serves chocolate covered strawberries at a pagan gathering in 2005)

Are you a chocoholic on a diet? Trying to get more fruits and vegetables into your life? Try dipping fruit in tempered dark chocolate! Dark chocolate has very little sugar in it and the fat is monosaturated, i.e., “good” fat that won’t raise your cholesterol level. Dark chocolate is also high in antioxidants. Chocolate almost qualifies as a health food!

If buying chocolate covered fruit blows your food budget you may make your own. You can go to the supermarket and buy some fruit and a Bakers Dipping Chocolate. However, if you prefer to use your own favorite dark chocolate you can make your own. All it takes is a basic understanding of how chocolate reacts to temperature. So let’s get started!

Chop up a large bar of dark baking chocolate and place into the top of a double boiler set over simmering water. Why a double boiler? Chocolate reacts badly to fast heating at high temperatures. It’s important to heat chocolate slowly and carefully so that the oils won’t separate from the cocoa.  Tempered correctly, chocolate will have a nice snap to it once it cools. Tempered incorrectly it will only make a mess!

When the chocolate is three-quarters melted, remove the bowl from the water and stir slowly but constantly. Stirring will distribute the still-tempered crystals throughout the chocolate and cause the other crystals to temper. The melted chocolate will be at around 95 to 96 degrees farenheit. Because the melting point of chocolate is actually below body temperature, it will feel slightly cool to the touch. When it is lifted on a spatula and drizzled onto itself, tempered chocolate will form ribbons on the surface of the chocolate. You can also test by dipping a knife blade in the chocolate and setting it on a plate to cool for about 5 minutes. When the chocolate on the knife is set, it shouldn’t have any streaks.

If the process of tempering goes to far, the chocolate may start to solidify in the bowl. Return it to the double boiler and stir briefly over warm water just long enough to remelt it. A workable temperature for tempered chocolate is 89 to 91 degrees.

Dip your fruit in the tempered chocolate and place on parchment paper. Allow to set in the refrigerator.

Source: The Essence of Chocolate