Hello, my name is Jeffrey Botticelli, and I have been a craft chocolatier since 2007. I began making chocolate in San diego, then moved my work to Sedona and Chocolatree in 2008. Like so many, I have been a chocolate enthusiast throughout life and it has been a great joy to create flavorful, simple, and complex confections. Tempering Chocolate is the process of taking the chocolate from a de-stabilized state and re-stabilizing the fat crystals, Adjusting the characteristics. My back round as a farrier and blacksmith provided the foundation for tempering chocolate through the tempering process with steel. Tempering is a process of heat treating, which is used to increase the toughness of iron-based alloys. My transition from this work into chocolate making translated fairly easy, and as a result I am a self taught chocolatier.