post-holiday food blogging - truffles!

I'm one of those people that makes a ridiculous amount of delicious food over the holidays. Aside from the previously mentioned apple butter, I also attempted fudge (which failed as fudge but succeeded as fudge sauce on ice cream) and caramels (which just failed), and made three different kinds of truffles. Considering that the truffles were the only ones that succeeded, really, here they are.

Truffles are kind of ridiculously easy to make considering their decadence. I mean, you can make them super fancy but even then it doesn't require that much effort. Chocolate truffles are balls chilled ganache coated in cocoa powder and/or other delicious things like nuts, sugar or more melted chocolate. Ganache itself is cream and melted chocolate. The three kinds I made were dark chocolate, white chocolate with lemon, and milk chocolate Nutella.

For the dark chocolate ones, I used Green & Black's 72% cook's chocolate. It's pricey but for truffles you need to get the good stuff - so use any good dark chocolate. These ones were originally supposed to be Earl Grey tea flavoured, hence the tea bags in the corner of this picture. Lastly, you need heavy/whipping cream. The ratio is generally one cup of cream to 8 oz of chocolate. 

Chop up the chocolate well and put it in a heat-safe bowl (like my Pyrex one). In a small saucepan bring the cream to just under a boil, then remove from heat. For the Earl Grey flavouring, steep a few tea bags in the hot cream for 30 minutes, then reheat (I did this but for some reason the tea flavour didn't catch - alas, still yummy). 

Pour the hot cream over the chopped chocolate, cover the bowl and let stand for 10 minutes.

Stir until smooth and creamy - no lumps!

Pour into a flat shallow dish, like this glass pie plate, cover with plastic wrap and leave in the fridge for at least an hour. 

When you take it out, it should be nice and solid. Then it's time to roll and coat. 

I chose cocoa powder, a classic. Dump some into a shallow container and get yourself a small spoon or a melon baller.

Scoop out small amounts of ganache and, after coating your hands with cocoa powder so they don't stick, form them into small, rough balls (not perfectly smooth ones).

Roll the balls in your coating until covered. 

If you like, you can put them in an attractive box and give as a gifts, like I did!

Next up are the lemon ones. I got the recipe from Technicolor Kitchen and I must say these are AWESOME. The lemon and white chocolate go so well together. Oh geez. Yum. 

Again, the same basic ingredients - about 1/3 cup cream and 500 g of white chocolate - this time with the addition of a lemon!

Grated zest from one lemon is called for. I hate grating zest so I did this first to get it out of the way, and did it right into the saucepan.

Next I chopped up the white chocolate to get that out of the way. 

Then, same principle - heat the cream until just bubbling, not boiling, then mix with chocolate. This time I put the chocolate into the saucepan and stirred right away.

Again, pour into pie plate, cover, chill, roll and coat. I chose to roll these in icing sugar instead of cocoa powder like in the original recipe, but it would appear that I forgot to take pictures of that!

Next up, Nutella. I knew there were some Nutella truffle recipes out there but I decided to create my own!

The ingredients for this are 200 g milk chocolate, 1/4 cup cream and 1/4 cup Nutella. 

Heat the cream, add the Nutella and stir. 

Mmmm, nice and smooth. 

Pour over the chopped chocolate in a heatsafe bowl, cover and let stand for ten minutes. Then stir until smooth, cover and chill. 

I chose to coat the Nutella ones in melted chocolate and sprinkles. Above is regular baker's chocolate melted with butter and a big spoonful of Nutella. I dipped the rolled balls of Nutella ganache into this.

Some of these I rolled in chocolate sprinkles after dipping, but not just any sprinkles - puur (dark) chocoladehagel!

After dipping/rolling, put them on a foil- or waxed paper-lined tray and pop them in the fridge. 

I found the Nutella ones to be a little tricky to work with because of the oil in the Nutella - it made them kind of slimy and they didn't roll very well. Once they were done they were fine, though. In the future I might use less Nutella, or maybe forgo it altogether and just add in some hazelnut extract. 

You can, of course, play around with these recipes to your heart's content, since they're so simple. A popular option is adding flavoured liquers (such as orange, raspberry, coffee, etc) when mixing the cream and chocolate together. Regardless it'll probably turn out yummy!!

A trio of truffles in a gift box!