Chocolate Confessions: Experimentation is Not Always by Choice

Well, I wanted to call this blog Confessions of an Amateur Chocolatier, but that seems trite. And mostly taken. So, you’ll all get to enjoy Chocolatier by Choice…in an uninteresting display until I get around to designing a template.

So, consider this your introduction, and get ready to read. Today’s chocolate adventure is, well, I haven’t named it yet, but it has been one of my true experiments – running without a recipe!

Side note: I had intended to photograph the whole process, but forgot until the end. So my next batch will include more photos.

The Motivation: A friend requested that I consider providing an in kind donation of truffles as a prize for a fundraising event for her charity supporting women’s reproductive rights. Of course, I was delighted that she even asked, so of course I said yes!

Then the paranoia set in, so I decided a test would be in order before the real batch.

Secondly, I received some not-so-great news from my vet, so I needed a way to relax.

The Inspiration: While wandering the aisles of my local grocery store, I spotted a bag of dried, tart cherries. Immediately I thought of a delightfully tart, juicy truffle complemented by a dark chocolate shell and I knew that I had a plan.

With this plan firmly in motion, I acquired a bag or two of dried cherries, some chocolate, cream, and red candy melts for decoration, and headed home to where my kitchen awaited!

I decided that to get the cherry flavor into the ganache, I would boil the cream with the cherries, in an attempt to draw the flavor into the cream. I even let the cherries sit in the cream for a few minutes before I began heating up my cream, just to give it some extra time to absorb. After achieving the proper temperature, I added the cream to my chopped chocolate through a strainer to remove the cherries (I wanted a smooth texture), and began mixing together my ganache.

Disaster! Well, maybe not disaster, but the ganache tasted nothing like cherry. I felt like I was back to square one, except I didn’t have any more whipping cream. After a last-minute pow-wow with my family to get my spirits back up, they suggested that I put the cherries in the food processor, with a little wine, to add to the ganache. Done deal.

But then a new inspiration struck as I opened the fridge. I had a bottle of irish cream that was just waiting for a purpose in life. Since I would have chopped the cherries in cream if I’d had any left, I decided to use the irish cream (and requested that my dad pick up cherry wine from his next trip to MI for a later batch).

So, with the flavor problem solved, I moved on to texture. Since the cherries didn’t seem to want to become a smooth puree, I added more irish cream than I had originally intended, but I finally got the consistency to something I thought I could work with. Add cherries to ganache, and I’m pretty much set on that score.

The Design: I had two routes I wanted to take these truffles. Route one is my standard molded truffles, which you’ll see at the bottom of the page, since these don’t take as much waiting time. Design is both easier and harder with these – they come with a fantastic shape, due to the mold, but it can be harder to elaborate on because you create a shell and then add filling. However, with a little creativity (or a cocoa butter airbrush), you can create awesome color to add to a shaped truffle.

So, I pulled out my latest shiny, a kugelhopf truffle mold, and set about figuring out how I was going to make these truffles as sophisticated as they could be. I started by melting the red candy melt (these are available at craft and candy stores, and may be available in larger grocery stores). Then I started the slow process of swirling the red color into each of the cavities in the mold, ensuring that the coating emphasized the whorls of the mold.

Route two is a dipped truffle, which I’ll add later this week when I’m had time to let the ganache set (and then also had time to hand dip!).

The Shell: This is the tricky thing about making molded truffles – your chocolate absolutely HAS to be tempered properly. If it isn’t, it won’t pull away from the sides enough as it sets, and you’ll never get it out of the mold without breaking it. So, please, temper your chocolate carefully.

Once I had my tempered chocolate, I filled the mold completely with chocolate. I was afraid to do this for forever, because I wasn’t sure I could get the interior of the chocolate out of the mold. But if you let the filled mold sit for about 5 minutes, you can tilt the entire thing vertically, and watch the center of the chocolate roll out into your remaining chocolate. It’s kinda cool, the entire thing reminds me of the opening sequence to the original Willy Wonka movie (the best one, in my opinion – maybe that’s why I got so into chocolate!). Usually, at this point, you’ll set the mold upside down over some parchment paper (elevated), and let it continue to drain for a bit, but I skipped this step.

Once the chocolate is done pouring out, you’re left with the top and sides of a shell. DO NOT remove the shells at this point, you’ll need to leave it in so you can add the bottom later.

Now, it’s time to add the filling. I find it’s best to use a Ziploc bag or pastry bag to pipe in the filling, but you can fill them however it feels best. Just remember not to fill all the way to the top, or your bottom won’t be able to meld with the sides. This step is crucially important for getting the truffles out of the molds, so please, if you take away one thing from this post, please remember to not fill a mold all the way to the top.

I had a few issues with this step, because some of the pureed cherry chunks were still a little too big to come out of the bag. I just removed the manually, and moved on. It was actually a good way to make sure the consistency was maintained in each truffle, so I’m kinda glad this happened, even if it slowed down the filling process.

After I gave the ganache a chance to cool down significantly, I re-melted (and re-tempered – important!) my chocolate to add the bottoms to the molds. I did not, however, sufficiently scrape away the excess chocolate before it hardened, so I had a tough time removing the truffles when they were ready to be removed. I need to get a better scraping too, because I’ve discovered that my best tool (the back of a knife) isn’t really straight enough to do a good job. Anyways, after you let the chocolate harden, you can toss the whole thing in the freezer for 3 – 5 minutes, and then, if you’ve properly tempered your chocolate and made sure you kept your mold properly scraped, a good whack should get your truffles out of the tray.

Keep in mind, there are lots of periods of waiting in between most of these steps, so even though it doesn’t sound too taxing, this took a good 3 hours or so of work, and I cheated on the timing a little bit. So definitely be prepared to lose an afternoon to truffle-making.

The End Result: Irish Cherry Truffles

Although you can clearly see the condensation on the sides (I left these in the freezer too long), the end result is stunning! The red contrasts well with the dark chocolate, and gives a quick hint as to what lies inside. I thought about adding a dried cherry to the indent of each truffle, but then decided that I should do one thing at a time - what do you think about adding a cherry on top?

Side note: I need a better camera, and a better photographer.

The Recipe:

Filling:

8 oz Semi-Sweet Chocolate

1 cup Heavy Whipping Cream

2 cups Dried, Tart Cherries

(Added) 2 shots Irish Cream

The Shell:

(Approximately) 8 oz Dark Chocolate