Easy and Exquisite Chocolate Truffle Recipe

I decided it was time to find a good truffle recipe. I really like truffles, but making them has always intimidated me. I've had some good homemade truffles from others, and I've had some average to pretty blah, so I wasn't quite sure how difficult it was to attempt.


Well, a little while ago I found a truffle recipe from two of the Master Chocolatiers on the Lindt website. It looked pretty simple, and I figured they know what they're doing, so I thought I'd give it a try.


Just as a side note, isn't that a cool job title? Master Chocolatier. Has a nice ring to it. And they get to wear the cool baker's caps and stuff......Maybe this will have to be one of my new lifetime goals. We'll see.....

Okay, so most importantly, the key to making a good truffle is to start out with good quality chocolate. Of course this Lindt recipe suggested using theirs, but I wanted to give some others a try. Here are the ones I experimented with:


Green & Black's Organic 70% Dark Chocolate
Hageland's Origins Ecuador 43% Milk Chocolate
Andes Mint Chips!


So, firstly, the G&B dark chocolate is amazing! I like the  dark much better than the mint that I had previously tried, just because you can appreciate the natural flavors much better. Hageland's is a new brand that I discovered, and this milk chocolate also very good! More notes on this later. And, I just love Andes Mints and just happened to have a bag of their baking chips in the cupboard, so I figured, why not?


All three turned out really great and were really easy! The one thing I suspected and discovered is that every chocolate has a slightly different density (since it's already tempered and has different levels of cocoa butter). I may adjust the proportions in the future depending on each chocolate type, but honestly, I was still really pleased with all of them. The dark chocolate truffles were the most dense, and going down with each one. The one regret I had is that I was in a hurry and so I just dusted all of them in cocoa powder to finish. I think the softer truffles would have been better if I would have dipped them in a hard chocolate shell. So.........next time (which I think will be very soon)!


HERE'S THE RECIPE! (By Ann Czaja & Hans Mazenauer)

Ingredients:

Ganache (this is technically what the truffles are made of - ganache can be used in a variety of other chocolate desserts as well)

1/4 cup heavy cream
5 oz milk, white, or dark chocolate, chopped
1 Tbsp butter, softened

Method:

Heat the cream until it just comes to a boil. Add the chopped chocolate and remove the saucepan from the heat. Stir or whisk the mixture until the chocolate is completely melted. Stir in the butter until the ganache is smooth.

Put the ganache in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap, ensuring that the plastic makes contact with the entire surface of the ganache. Refrigerate overnight or until the ganache is set.

To form basic truffles:

Use a melon baller, small ice cream scoop, teaspoon, or piping bag. Roll the ganache in a ball and place on parchment paper.

To finish the truffles:

Option 1: Roll truffles in unsweetened cocoa powder, powdered sugar, chocolate shavings, chopped chocolate, chopped toasted nuts or coconut.

Option 2: Temper a few ounces of desired type of chocolate. Wash hands, rinse them in cold water and dry them thoroughly (cold hands prevent the truffles from softened and the tempered chocolate from getting too warm). Place a tablespoon of tempered chocolate in the palm of your hand and roll the truffles to coat. Place the finished truffle on the parchment paper. Replenish the chocolate in your hand as needed. The chocolate coated truffles can also be rolled in the toppings suggested above.

Makes approximately 20 truffles

So, not super pretty (at least not like the picture perfect website display on Lindt). I'll work on the details later. I just wanted to make sure the recipe was worth trying again, and it is!!!

I had to hurry and get this picture before they all disappeared, because they didn't last long.