How to Make Great Chocolate With Pink Pepper

This is my first and a fairly easy Instructable on how to make a beautiful and very good chocolate.
It's something that someone that haven't worked with chocolate can do (it might be a bit hard to temper chocolate, but you will learn), but also for someone that makes chocolate every weekend.

I have a big passion for chocolate and have liked it since I was 10 years old (now I'm 15). I want to share my passion and "knowledge" about the "Theobroma cacao" ("Food of the gods").

This is the first of hopefully many recipes with chocolate.
How many instructables I give depends allot on the response I get.

Some general tips about chocolate:
1. Never keep it in your refrigerator (unless it says so in the recipe).
2. Never get water into your chocolate.
3. Never get flour into your chocolate or it will mould.

Step 1: Tools and Materials

This recipe will make about 60 pieces of chocolate. (I did half a recipe.)

To make this you will need:

The tools:
A Fork
A Thermometer
Two Pots
A small bowl or small pot
A "normal size" pot
A long knife or some sort of scraper
A ruler
A strainer
A Pounder
Another knife
Something square to mould the filling into and cling film that will cover the entire surface of the mould, including the sides. (You can also make the mould out of aluminium foil)

The ingredients:
To make the filling:
250g (roughly 8,8 oz) Valrhona Manjari chocolate for best result (Or any chocolate with a 60-70% of cocoa).
200g (roughly 7,1 oz) whip cream
40g (roughly 1,4 oz) glucose
1 chinese anise
5 white peppercorns
1 lime
50g (roughly 1,8 oz) unsalted butter
For dipping:
400g (roughly 14,1 oz) of dark 70% chocolate
Pink pepper

To get a more accurate weight in oz you can go in to:
http://opentoronto.com/calculators/converter_oz_to_gr_ounces_to_grams.php

Step 2: Making the Ganache

Start by crushing the white peppers in a pounder and wash the lime to get all of the preservatives out of the shell. Then rasp the lime.
Finely chop the chocolate and put into your "normal sized" pot.
Now, boil the whip cream, the glucose, the chinese anise, the crushed white peppers and the rasp from the lime.
Run the boiled whip cream trough the strainer over the chocolate. Stir it until it get a consistency like in the picture.
Now stick the thermometer into the "ganache" when it's 35-40 degrees (C) or 95-104 degrees (F) stir in the butter.
Cover the entire surface, including the sides, of your mold with the cling film,
Now pour the ganache into your square mould.

Let it rest in a cool cupboard 12-14 degrees (C) or 53-57 degrees (F). Let it rest there for 24hours.

NEVER keep your ganache in the refrigerator unless it says so in the recepie or if you don't have anywhere that is cool.

Step 3: When Your Done With the Ganache

Take out the ganache and put it on a cutting board.
Melt 2msk or 2Tbs of chocolate. When it has melted you put it on the ganache and stroke it back and forward over the ganache , with your knife or scraper, until it has stiffen.
Now turn the ganache over and cut out pieces 2 x 3 cm or you can make them 1 inch x 1 inch, use the ruler to get a good result.

Now let it stay in the room for 30 min, to get the room temperature.

Step 4: Temper the Chocolate

Now for the tricky part.

The secret to getting a good final result is to temper the chocolate. Tempering the chocolate will cause it not to melt in room temperature and it will make the fat stay in the chocolate instead of showing on the outside.

Do a waterbath where you have a big pot of water and you put a smaller pot with the chocolate into the bigger pot.

You start by melting 50% of your chocolate in this case 200g of the chocolate. When it has reached 48-50 degrees (C) or 118-122 degrees (F). Now dipit into a bath of cold water, for four or five seconds, to stop the warmup of the chocolate. Now stir the rest of the chocolate in. Stir until it has gone down to 27-28 degrees (C) or 80-82 degrees (F).
Now reheat it to 31-32 degrees (C) or 88-90 degrees (F) and now dip it again in the cold water.

Notice that you temper white chocolate and milk chocolate different.
It is VERY important that the chocolate does not exceed the temperatures given and that no water gets into the chocolate.

NOTE: The temperatures in Farenheit are directly converted from Celsius, so it might not be as accurate as some instruction you have in a book or if you google "Temper chocolate".

Step 5: Completing the Chocolate

Now dip your ganache in the tempered chocolate with a fork. Drag it of on the edge of the pot, not to get a foot on your ganache. Decorate with 1-2 pink peppers.