I’m passionate about sweet things and chocolate, so I occasionally get the urge to whip up a huge batch of truffles. Usually at special times, like the holidays. This time I taught my friends Khoa, Graeme and Aaron how I go about making them, and the basics of tempering chocolate. It was a lot of work, but we had fun and drank the leftover liquors. =P
The first step was to make ganache; which is simply alcohol, hot cream and lots of chopped chocolate. We made Kahlua Spice, Grand Marnier Orange, Baileys Mint and a vegan coconut chocolate flavour. The vegan ganache uses a good quality coconut milk instead of whipping cream. Mmmmmm. When they are the perfect temperature I whip the heck out of them, giving the centres a smooth, airy yet thick and melt in your mouth texture.
The chocolate I prefer to use is Callebaut dark belgian chocolate. I also love milk and white, but if I can only afford one bar I go for the dark. After the centres are rolled we dip them in tempered chocolate. Tempering involves melting and cooling the chocolate by adding little bits of chocolate and a large hunk or “seed” of chocolate which is in temper. This and a lot of stirring is critical because you need to encourage the chocolate to reform the crystal structure it lost when it was melted. As soon as it is in temper you dip the centres quickly before it hardens.
I learned to make truffles while I was working at the Cookhouse. Tomeq Weekes of Alchemy of Angels was teaching some chocolate classes and I learned a great deal. I’m not sure if he is still teaching classes in Halifax, but I would highly recommend him as a teacher. He is a trained chocolatier and a lovely person.
Dan and I also made origami boxes to present our truffles in. They were surprisingly easy and quick to make thanks to a little help from a kind person on you tube that posted this how to video. The only thing we did differently was cut two long strips of parchment paper to line the boxes.
