A wise person once observed that chocolate was the answer (and then asked what the question was). I think we can all agree with that. And with all the chocolate on The Great British Bake Off last week I think it’s about time we started talking about chocolate. Mainly because I like chocolate; but also because I have a competition for you.

Thermapen

Having been sent a Thermapen a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been looking for an opportunity to use it to do something exciting. There were many obvious choices whilst cooking various stews, stir fries and other such meat dishes, but as I don’t regularly use a meat thermometer it seemed a little disingenuous to start now. But when tempering chocolate was something I was having conversations about on an almost daily basis it seemed like I had something new to try out.

Since it was my first time tempering I think I will let myself off with a few errors, and there is much to think about next time. But at the end of the day I got to eat a large amount of chocolate in various shapes, patterns and covered a Chocolate Orange Torte in it (more on that soon).

I actually was surprised how easy the Thermapen was to use, the auto-rotating display is pretty handy for sticking it in at all angles. It’s the first kitchen thermometer I’ve ever owned, but it’s definitely something I will use again in future.

If you want to know how to temper chocolate, BBC Good Food has an excellent guide, which I used. Oh, and you might want to know that the highest temperature that Dark Chocolate gets to in the tempering process is 58ºC, just saying…


A few features of the Thermapen you might also like to know about, apart from the fact that it’s entirely waterproof - always a handy feature in the kitchen - it’s got a sensor on the backlight, so it only comes on when you need it, and it automatically goes to sleep so you don’t have to worry about not switching it off and the battery running out. And my favourite, that the display rotates, so that when you hold the Thermapen at an odd angle you don’t have to attempt any acrobatics to read the screen.

A photo posted by Craig Cockburn (@theusualsaucepans) on

Ts&Cs

1. The prize it 1 (one) Thermapen and the prize will be fulfilled by ETI (and I/The Usual Saucepans take no responsibility for its fulfilment)

2. The winner will be notified within 24 hours of the competition ending and will have a further 48 hours to respond to the email notification. If they do not respond, another winner will be drawn at random.

3. Competition open from midday on Monday October 5th 2015 and will be open until 11:59pm on Monday 19th October 2015.

4. UK entry only, you must be over 18 to enter.

5. All email addresses collected will be added to The Usual Saucepan’s monthly newsletter, they will not be passed on. The only information passed on will be the winner’s name, address and email address - this will be used by ETI to fulfil the prize.

Craig Craig (216 Posts)

Edinburgh-dwelling, baking and food-obsessed, twenty-something adventure enthusiast. Runs on liberal amounts of coffee, cheese, cake and gin; bribable with same.


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