TCHO Chocolate bark class

Heather gave me a very nice little present for Valentines Day: A chocolate bark making class hosted by TCHO. For those who does not know TCHO it is a very small artisan chocolate factory in San Francisco that makes world class products. They make their chocolate from specific regions around the world and depending on where the chocolate comes from it will taste very differently, they dont add any flavors, its the chocolate itself that is so diverse.
Making chocolate bark is super simple, just pour some melted chocolate on a tray and sprinkle what you feel like on top, but to make it well theres some finer details to it. The expert from the chocolate factory highlighted things like look, texture, mouthfeel, consistency and so on.
Good chocolate is shiny, semi-hard almost crisp yet smooth, and heres where it gets a little scientific, the chocolate needs to be "tempered". And at this point I started having flashbacks to my material science classes. The desirable qualities of good chocolate comes from the tempering process, and according to TCHO you need to do the following:
Heat it to 120F, over indirect heat. This will melt all internal structure (crystalline structure) in the chocolate. You then cool it down to about 100F while constantly stirring, then comes the important part: add already tempered chocolate. About 1/3 more. These cool, fresh chocolate bits will have the desired crystalline structure that the melted chocolate can build upon as it cools down so the rest of the batch will adapt the factory tempered and tight structure. If you just cool down completely melted chocolate, the crystalline structure will be full of messy crystals and this will weaken the structure and not reflect light well. Affecting look and feel.
Keep stirring until about 90F and completely smooth and then pour into a flat tray or whatever form you like. Remove air bubbles by smacking the tray a few times and sprinkle whatever you like on top of the melted chocolate. Since good chocolate has a natural fat content of about 60% other fat things like nuts and bacon goes well, also sweet things like dried berries work well, to bring things to the next level sprinke coarse salt on the chocolate. To cool the chocolate you need a cool dry place.
One of the more interesting things I learned in class was that you can take raw (roasted) chocolate beans and put them in the blender and make chocolate butter just like you make peanut butter. I guess you can add some sugar and vanilla but wow, home made chocolate spread.... yes please!
At the end of the class we all got to eat as much of the results we wanted. It was divine. We also got to take home a goodie bag of the ingredients that was used in class. Thanks babe!