The molds were clean. I'll be honest I didn't check the temperature of the mold before I poured the chocolate in. The room temperature is about 20 degrees celsius. Out of a batch of 8 chocolates I made, this is the worst looking (so I'm not using this). The others, I left longer in the fridge and the marks were a lot less visible. Still not perfect, but okay. But maybe a combination of checking proper mold temperature, and leaving them longer in the fridge would do the trick. An extra 2 minutes patience could have saved me a bar. The mold is polycarbonate and measures 10x10cms and it is plain flat, I knew this would probably not be the best idea.

Thanks for the advice.

updated by @joe-john: 11/21/16 15:29:22

Mark:

Patience. You need to wait for the chocolate and the miracle of proper and sufficient crystallization. These look to be mold release marks. I would definitely wait before you try to demold and see what happens. Your molds may not be clean enough or they may not be the right temperature when you put the chocolate in them. And ... what's the temperature of the room you're working in the humidity, and the temp and humidity of whatever you're using to cool the chocolate?

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@DiscoverChoc

Few quick points:

1. If your chocolate is correctly tempered but the surface temperature of the mould cavity is not correct (too cold) you will get the result as in your photos.

To put it in basic terms heat flows from the chocolate into the mould surface, chocolate cools too fast resulting in creation of "unwanted" type of cocoa butter crystals in this area.

Try warming your moulds up to 27-29C and see if this will improve the results.

2. The trick to making a nicer looking product is to have a bit of texture on the mould cavity which gives you texture on the product surface. Flat surface with nothing on it as in your moulds is not a good idea.

3. Keep tapping and vibrating too get rid of bubbles. Using lower viscosity chocolate will help.

Can anyone please look at the pictures and tell me what am I doing wrong? The chocolate is well tempered, but when I unmold, they come with a whitish area. Not all of them. I'm starting to think it's the unmolding part. I put the tempered chocolate to set in the fridge for about 5 to 10 mins, and perhaps I'm a little impatient, so as soon as I look at the mold and I see it is releasing from the sides, I help to unmold by twisting the mold. The area you see in white is the area which wasn't released whilst in the fridge. Should I leave it a little longer?

Also, when I put the chocolate in the mold I tap it so I remove the bubbles. Obviously the bubbles come from the other side. But I'd like my chocolate to be free from bubbles from both sides. Should I keep tapping it?

Thank you for your help my fellow wizards!