Truffles – The Happy Little Baker

Due to the usual Christmas lull I’ve reduced the amount of sweet making and baking down to a minimum but after I made a Black Forest Gateaux inspired cake I was left with 300ml of double cream.

I decided that it was a sign, a sign to make chocolate truffles! Not that I really needed a sign but you know, inspiration comes in many forms and this time it came in exactly 300ml of cream.

I love to make truffles but the part I don’t like is the rolling and shaping, it is messy and I never seem to do a really good job of it. This time I am going to try different methods one day – rolling in cocoa, coating in chocolate and piping into chocolate moulds.

I have found the ones coated in a dusting of cocoa powder to be the most successful ones to eat so far but they are not the prettiest. I think this is because the truffle mix was a little too soft when I tried to shape and because I am not very good yet at tempering chocolate.

Rolling them in cocoa powder is the easiest to do.

I flavoured the inside of the truffle mix with cherry and rolled in cherry cocoa powder, from the company Sugar and Crumbs. Although these are a little bitter (maybe some icing sugar added next time) they look more like truffles and are easier to shape.

I might be a long, long way from master chocolatier but these look a lot more impressive than the skills required to make them.

Dusted Cherry Truffles

Ingredients

300g Dark Chocolate
300ml Double Cream
50g Butter
1 tablespoon cherry liquor
Cocoa Powder (ideally cherry flavoured)

Method

Chop up your chocolate and put into a large bowl and set aside

In a pan heat up the cream and butter slowly till the butter melts and the cream begins to simmer. This is where you start to get a few gentle bubbles on the top, try not to boil it!

Immediately pour over the chocolate and stir until it the chocolate has melted

Add in your cherry liquor, or any other flavour you fancy. Add it a little at a time and taste as you don’t want to add too much and make it too strong.

When the mix has cooled a little, refrigerate for at least 4 hours

Take the mix out of the fridge and either using a teaspoon or a melon baller, spoon out truffle sized pieces and working very quickly roll them in your hands till they are ball shaped

Once you have the shape roll them into the cocoa powder and set aside

After all of them are finished, keep them in the fridge in an airtight container and they should last a couple of days (if you don’t eat them all in one night and feel completely sick)

My second foray into chocolate making has appeared to have been quite successful. This time I wanted to make some truffles for my sister using a couple of her favourite flavours – white chocolate and strawberry.

Unfortunately I have had to use everyone else’s response to the taste of the truffles to work out if they are nice or not as I don’t like the taste of strawberry! It is one of the few flavours (along with banana, liquorice and honey) that I really don’t like but strangely, I like actual strawberries.

The white chocolate is a lot harder to work with than dark chocolate as it is has lot slimier feeling when you are trying to roll them into balls and does melt a lot quicker but it does have it’s advantages to.

Firstly – you can colour the white chocolate into any colour you like using usual food colourings. For me, I always use gel colours and never the liquids because they completely change the consistency of what you are working with and are less vibrant. The gel colours only need a very small amount to make something look quite interesting.

Secondly – white chocolate doesn’t have too much of its own taste so you need to add less flavourings.

I wasn’t sure whether I had put too much of the strawberry essence in as it was far too sickly for me, but according to my sister it was just right.

I have to say that it is really nice making your own chocolates, especially when people look quite impressed, and the next step is to make the boxes to put them in so I can give them away as gifts so they look very pretty.

Luckily as I have a graphic designer for a husband and my cousin is very good at free hand drawing, I’m sure my labels will be better than my boxes!

White chocolate and Strawberry truffles

I made these into 18 truffles

150g (5.3oz) white chocolate
60g (2.2 oz) butter
3 tbls double cream
½ – 1 tsp strawberry flavouring
Little bit of red or pink gel food colouring – optional but I thought they looked pretty
Icing sugar to coat

In a bain marie (a bowl over boiling water making sure the water doesnt touch the bottom of the bowl) gently melt the chocolate, butter and double cream till it is all combined. You can also do this in the microwave.

Take off the heat and stir in the stawberry flavouring and food colouring till it is all combined. Don’t worry if it looks a little greasy at this stage.

Put it in the fridge for a couple of hours or overnight. It will set quite hard and loose its greasy look when ready.

Take out of the fridge about an hour – 2 hours before you plan on rolling the truffles as this will give it time to soften up. Using a teaspoon measure out a small amount and drop into the icing sugar on a plate.

Using the icing sugar to stop it sticking or melting, roll it into balls and put into small paper cases (I use petite four cases or tiny cupcake ones)

The truffles will keep in the fridge for up to a week… and if you have friends and family who enjoy them then they’ll last about 30 minutes.