[Sca-cooks] Favorite chocolate truffle recipe?

[Anne-Marie Rousseau]

Hey all from Anne-Marie

I just made truffles for Xmas cookie plates and used the recipe on the
back of the Ghiradelli bittersweet baking bar.

It involved 1/4 cup of cream brought to a simmer. Add 8oz of chopped
chocolate and 6T of butter, stirred in a double boiler until smooth and
melty ("oops! Got some on my finger!" ;))

Put in a shallow bowl and chill for two hours. Use a melon baller to
scoop up roundish bits and roll in unsweetened cocoa.

Is that basic enough? They were lovely, with a nice creamy consistency.
Not very stable though...I'm storing them in a tin of unsweetened cocoa
in a cool place so they don't go all melty on me ("oops! Got some more
on my hands!" ;))

This is the first time I've made truffles and was impressed with how
easy it was, really. This recipe is the one that a friend of mine uses
and they'r awefully good...

Of course the better the chocolate, the better the truffle, I'm sure!
And how much flavoring can one add before you screw up the consistency?
I'd like to try flavoring them next time :). (can you say Kirschwasser?
Maybe with some bits of dried cherry in there?)

--AM





-----Original Message-----
From: sca-cooks-bounces at ansteorra.org
[mailto:sca-cooks-bounces at ansteorra.org] On Behalf Of Phil Troy/ G.
Tacitus Adamantius
Sent: Saturday, December 20, 2003 9:08 AM
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Favorite chocolate truffle recipe?

Hullo, the list!

I'm in a slight predicament (and if this is the worst that I can say, 
I must be doing fairly well). I got out my copy of the Larousse 
Gastronomique to find the chocolate truffle recipe I used a couple of 
years ago, and of the three or four listed, none of them look really 
familiar to me. I'm leaning in the direction of the cream truffle 
recipe (as opposed to the one that is specifically a truffle with 
butter recipe, or the one that calls for paprika and prunes -- it's 
gotta be better than it sounds, no?). Even the truffle with cream 
recipe isn't exactly like what I remember doing, but I remember using 
one of those as a basis. I used either the cream or the butter 
recipe, and then flavored it with a champagne reduction (basically a 
bottle of champagne simmered down to about 1/4 cup), which turned out 
to produce a rather remarkable champagne truffle. It was cheap 
champagne, too ;-).

Basically we're looking at some combination of dark, bittersweet 
(sometimes even unsweetened) chocolate melted with butter, or 
butter/cream and/or egg yolks, with or without extra sugar or 
flavorings or internal garnishes like the aforementioned prunes in 
Armagnac, rolled into balls and then rolled in cocoa or ground 
chocolate.

Very serious chocaholic fix, with commercial versions being hugely 
expensive for good ones, but still not really doing justice to the 
genre. They don't keep really well, either, so I would view these as 
more under the jurisdiction of the pastry chef than the confectioner: 
make up a batch of the stuff, then roll and coat immediately prior to 
serving, seems to be the best plan, unless you coat them with 
chocolate couverture, which is cheating, since they then no longer 
resemble truffles.

Unless I can come up with a better plan, I think I'm gonna go with 
the one that calls for butter, cream, and yolks, and add the 
champagne reduction to that. I think maybe I used that one, and 
omitted the coffee that that recipe calls for, substituting the 
champagne instead.

So, does anyone have a favorite, pretty generic chocolate truffle 
recipe? I also looked at ganache recipes, because I know there's a 
school that says truffles are just balls of ganache; I don't really 
ascribe to this myself; it seems like kind of a cheat to me.

The less hardcore chocolate people are getting an augmentation of 
chocolate-covered marzipan, and the ultra-weenies (myself included) 
can have theirs covered with milk chocolate (you godda problum wid 
dat, choco-snobs???)

Many thanks for info, advice, opinions, etc. And a happy whichever, 
if any, Holiday you celebrate...

Adamantius
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