Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Truffles

This year for Christmas I made truffles to give away to all my neighbors.

Thankfully they're easy to make and oh so delicious.

First thing you need is about a lb. of chocolate. Dark, milk, mint, doesn't matter. Make sure it's something you like to eat on it's own. In this photo I'm using a cadbury milk chocolate bar. What you need to do is chop the entire lb of chocolate into small pieces (for me it ended up more like shavings which worked out better).


Put the chocolate in a bowl.

I forgot to take pictures of this step but you need to heat up 3/4 cup of heavy whipping cream on the stove. Heat it until just before boiling when bubbles appear around the side of the pan. Remove the cream from the heat and pour directly into your bowl of chocolate shavings. It should combine into a smooth creamy mixture (for me I still had a few lumps so I placed the bowl over a pan of boiling water and made it a little hotter to melt the rest). Cover the bowl with ceran wrap by pushing it down into the bowl directly onto the smooth chocolate mixture. Refrigerate at least 2 hours but until the mixture is solid.


At this point remove the bowl from the fridge and remove the ceran wrap. Next to it place a small bowl with cocoa powder. Take a spoon, remove a spoonful of chocolate from the bowl and drop it into the powder. Now it's time to get your hands dirty. Grab that spoonful and roll it into a ball. Place it onto a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper. If the chocolate mixture gets too soft place it back into the refrigerator to harden again.



Once you get the balls all formed it's time to double boil (melt) more chocolate. The best I've found is actually a dipping chocolate in the form of large chips. The best locally here in Provo is from Funfetti by the distribution center on University Parkway. Their milk chocolate chips. Generally another lb. will do.


Melt down the chocolate until it's smooth, being careful not to overhead. Generally once it starts melting down it's hot enough to remove from the heat and with continued mixing the melt all the chocolate. Once it's melted drop a ball of chocolate into the bowl make sure it's covered and then place on another cookie sheet covered in Parchment Paper.

Very important note on the dipping chocolate, don't get any water in it whatsoever. If you do it will seize (thicken and get lumpy) and make dipping impossible.

Once all the balls are covered place it in the refrigerator to harden again. If you want you can drizzle more chocolate on top of the hardened truffles. I did green drizzles on my mint truffles so you could tell them apart.

Hopefully all that made sense, I'm sad I forgot to take a picture of the final product but it was oh so yummy!

Have fun making your own truffles!