McCaslin says a customer brought back a bar of chocolate and said, Your chocolate is shit. It crumbled apart and tasted like garbage and I had to throw it away. He wanted his money back.
“I kind of have him to thank,” says McCaslin, who speaks in a grounded and calm way (and is always ready to answer any questions about chocolate). “Once I gave him the refund, I resolved to go home, learn how to temper chocolate, and experiment with roasting cacao.”
Tempering is the process of melting and then cooling chocolate at certain temperatures that then allow it to be shaped. Without tempering, the chocolate has no shine and tends to soften at room temperature.