Truffles

Recently, John and I immerse ourselves in holiday truffle making.

Truffle making is a huge undertaking. Even when you are experienced, it never stops being a ton of work. Here's why -

A truffle consists of an inner ganache and an outer shell. A ganache is basically chocolate that is flavored and softened in some way - so it could be white chocolate softened with cream and flavored with cherry oil, or dark chocolate thinned with amaretto, or even milk chocolate spiced with cayenne pepper. The tricks to making a good ganache are -


1. Don't burn the chocolate! Dark choc will burn at 120 degrees, Milk at 115, White at 110. When you melt chocolate in the microwave (which my truffle making teacher told me is the best way, better than on a double boiler due to risk of water/steam messing up the chocolate), the chocolate can get hot FAST. You won't even know the chocolate is burnt until you mix in your cream, integration doesn't happen, the chocolate freezes up, and you stand there going "What the f$$## happened?". If you reach this point, then your chocolate is ruined and you have to throw it in the garbage. If you were mixing in cream that was already flavored in some way (such as with citrus zest that you spent 30min micro planing), then you have wasted a LOT of time and money. The best way is, of course, very time consuming - heat the chocolate for 30 seconds, scrape bowl with a rubber spatula, then 15 seconds, then 6 seconds over and over and over again. It can take a long time and the urge to speed up the process can be overwhelming, but resistance is critical!


2. Don't burn the chocolate! If you are mixing in some sort of flavor infused cream, make sure the cream is sufficiently cool. If the cream is warm or neutral to your skin then it is ok. If it feels hot, then it might burn your chocolate.



3. Not too thin, not too thick - learn how to make your ganache the right consistency.

• If you are pipetting the ganache into a molded shell then you need it runny or it won't flow. Do not refrigerate the ganache else it will be unusable. You must have your shells ready so that you can pipette the ganache in fairly soon after the ganache is made.


• If you are rolling your ganache into balls for hand dipping then you must refrigerate the ganache to make it firm. Some ganaches (such as white chocolate ganaches) benefit from longer cooling periods (overnight), some (such as dark chocolate varieties) benefit from shorter (3 hrs or less) times in the fridge. You have to play and practice so that you can learn your ganaches, as they will all behave differently. You will mess up many times and will have to try, try again. You can't force ganache to work the way you want it to. If a white chocolate ganache isn't firm enough then game over - it just won't dip. This can happen even if you are using dark chocolate, as some flavorings (such as mint extract or amaretto) will make the ganache very thin. Try, try again.

Anyway, once you have successfully made your ganache and rolled it into balls (we will skip any discussions of molding for now), you are ready to dip!

Here's the kicker - you can't just melt chocolate and then dip the balls, else the chocolate comes out all crumbly and streaky. Chocolate has to be tempered. Tempering is a process by which you melt all the 'bad' crystals and get the 'good' crystals to grow. If you play your cards right, the chocolate ends up shiny with snap. You do it like this -

1. Chop chocolate into small bits using a chocolate breaking fork.


2. Put chocolate in microwave, melt carefully (in stages, scraping in between, so that it doesn't burn, per above instructions)


3. Using a digital thermometer, get chocolate to 115 (110 for white) so that the 'bad' crystals melt out.


4. Put melted chocolate on a marble slab (a heat sink) and agitate (scrape) it repeatedly as you bring temperature down below 84 degrees. The agitation is required, and you shouldn't cool it too quickly else the chocolate will get 'shocked' and will harden (i.e. make sure your marble slab isn't too cold before you start).


5. Once chocolate is down to 84 degrees, you must bring the temperature back up to 88/89 degrees to melt any remaining 'bad' crystals. So pop it back in the microwave. Don't let it exceed 91 degrees, else go back to step 3 (because you will have melted both the bad and good crystals and need to go back through the agitating and cooling step to get the good crystals back)


6. Your chocolate is now tempered! You have about 8 minutes before the chocolate cools enough for it to go out of temper, so dip FAST!


7. Wait for dipped truffles to dry and then you will find out if you messed up any of the above steps. If you made any mistakes then all of your truffles will be streaky and unusable. You will feel like smashing your marble slab over your head.

---OR---

1. Buy a chocolate tempering machine. Turn it on, put chocolate in, wait for the beep, put a bit more chocolate in (as seed to kick start the good crystals), wait for next beep, then dip. You can now take your time dipping, as the machine keeps the chocolate agitated and keeps it at the right temp. VOILA!


2. Dip truffles, observe the perfect temper that the machine produces every single time! You will be loving life.

Needless to say that after many tempering joys (and pains) with the marble slab, John bought me a tempering machine. Back then I was way too cheap to buy one for myself, so he gave it to me for Christmas in 2003. We have never looked back.

This year we made 3 kinds of truffles in the following quantities -

1. White chocolate citrus ganache dipped in dark chocolate - 138 truffles


2. Dark chocolate raspberry ganache dipped in dark chocolate - 125 truffles


3. 2 layer bar truffles - milk chocolate coffee, dark chocolate hazelnut (dipped in dark chocolate) - 110 truffles

The white chocolate citrus truffles have always been my favorite and are made as follows (recipe is for 120-130 truffles, I recommend doing 1/4 this many if it's your first time) -

1. Micro plane zest the peel off of 6 oranges, 4 lemons, and 4 limes.


2. Pour 2 cups of cream over zest, bring to boiling on stove, boil for 1min, turn off heat, let steep for 10min


3. While cream is steeping, melt 2lbs white chocolate


4. Using cheesecloth, strain out citrus bits so you are left with the flavored cream


5. Verify that cream is not too hot (so that it won't burn the chocolate), whisk cream into melted chocolate


6. Put ganache into airtight container and refrigerate overnight. Air tightness is key, as chocolate loves to absorb yucky scents from the fridge


7. Scoop ganache into balls, roll balls in hands so that edges are smooth


8. Dip ganache balls


9. Melt 2oz white chocolate, drizzle over top of balls
   

The dark chocolate raspberry truffles were made in the following way (recipe is for 120-130 truffles, do 1/4 of this if attempting for first time) -

1. Put 3lbs frozen raspberries on the stove, cook for 5-10min so that raspberries thaw and explode their juices


2. Use a fine sieve to strain out the seeds


3. Put the sauce back on the stove and reduce until VERY thick (this could take a while)


4. While sauce is reducing, melt 2lbs dark chocolate


5. Pour reduced sauce into bowl, let cool to 120 degrees


6. Whisk sauce into chocolate


7. Add 4Tbs butter, 8Tbs cream, 4Tbs chambord, whisk


8. Put in fridge for 3 hrs


9. Scoop ganache balls, roll ganache balls


10. Dip
    
    

Phew. 2 full weekends of work. Fortunately, Isabella helped. By "helped" I mean "helped made a mess and did lots of licking"

The result - 47 people were "Truffled" with 5-8 piece boxes labeled "Chocolates by John and Holly". Yay!