Every so often, I watch somebody on a cooking show make chocolate ganache and then make it into truffles. After a while, I developed an urge to try it for myself.
1. The Ganache
Ganache sounds incredibly fancy, but it isn't hard. The recipe I followed, from the iPad app of Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything", just had me heat heavy cream and pouring it over chopped bittersweet chocolate and stirring until melted. I needed to give my mixture about 20 seconds in the microwave for a bit of reheating in order to get it smooth.
2. Forming the Truffles
The ganache has to get solid in the refrigerator in order to be formed into truffles. My recipe said this would take an hour or two: I just left it in there over night.
The ganache not only has to GET cold, it has to STAY cold: I was amazed at how little it took to get it too soft to form. I wore latex gloves (purchased for working with fresh chile peppers) as I worked. After my third scoop of ganache turned out too soft to work with, I also wound up putting my bowl of ganache into a larger bowl with ice water to keep it solid: this actually worked quite well.
To form the truffles, I scooped about a tablespoon of the ganache and quickly rolled it between my gloved hands until it was kind of ball-shaped. As you can see, my truffles are perfectly round and uniform in size:
*ahem* Or not.
3. Coatings
I chose to follow three suggestions for coatings in which to roll my poor naked truffles. I chopped some mixed nuts, and I also used some sweetened coconut I have at the moment and unsweetened cocoa powder.
(I also tried adding about one part of ancho chile powder to about four parts of cocoa powder, but a pinch of that was WAY too strong. I still like the idea, but that's an experiment for another day.)
4. Assembly
While I prepped the coatings, I had my truffles getting chilled again in the refrigerator. While I think this was a good plan, I also think I might let them sit out for just a couple of minutes before I began rolling. I think it works better when they're a little bit soft.
I found it very easy to coat the truffles with the cocoa, reasonably easy with the chopped nuts, and a bit of a challenge with the coconut.
Here are the final truffles:
These truffles will obviously take no time at all at room temperature to become too soft too eat neatly. I'll keep them refrigerated, and I'm glad I don't have to transport them in August. I wonder if a different formulation of ganache would be just a little more solid.
I found these REALLY easy to make, actually, and much easier than cooked sugar candies. (For those of you scoring it home, the tally is currently Cooked Candy 4, Pedersen 1. But I will have success eventually.)
If you have any interested
