I’m up early with Pirate (our 11 week old aussie puppy, see the cuteness within right here and here …) to make chocolate truffles and other desserts for Turkey Day.
I was going to make some Rum Truffles, but also wanted to make a new kind that I had never tasted before.
I found a recipe for Earl Grey Truffles. Sounded totally strange, but hey, I’m all for something new… The ganache is currently cooling in my fridge, but the taste I had of it is totally amazing!
The bergamot in the tea gives the chocolate a faint taste of lavender. It’s delicate, it’s hard to place, but it’s there… and boy is it tasty!
Mmm. Chocolate…
Does anyone have great culinary discoveries as of late? Just thought I’d share mine!
I used to make the complex hard-shelled, soft-centered, nasty-to-make truffles and one year said hey, why not just make some of the more simple “roll 'em in cocoa” kind…
They are really quite amazing tasting - a little bit of a pain to make, but all in all, far more simple than the stuff I used to make… Mind you, I’ve become pretty damned good at tempering chocolate. It’s not as easy as it looks!
Oooh, will you post some candy recipes? I keep swearing I’m going to make them as gifts, but the recipes I have are really basic and I’d like to do something with a bit of a twist.
Well… I, uh… made some fudge one year. Does that count?
(and I just posted that so I could stay OT and mention that that’s the cutest puppy I’ve seen in a long time. Especially with the different colored eyes.)
Gladly! This is a “cheater’s recipe” since the tempering happens in the warm cream mixture. The hard part is the hand-rolling, but there are tricks to make it happen more easily (like using a bowl and spinning the chocolate ball in the cocoa dusting will give it shape, etc.)
Be careful what kind of Earl Grey you use and how much of it you use. Some will come out bitter, and that’s no goooood… You CAN use tea bags, which makes it much easier.
I made one batch with the Earl Grey, one batch with rum - no hard shells on any because I didn’t have the time. I rolled the Earl Grey truffles in some Ghuiardelli cocoa/chocolate shaving powder which is sweeter and doesn’t kill too much of the earl grey bite. For the rum ones, I had to balance adding more chocolate into the mix because of the added liquid. I rolled those in coconut.
Thanks, I’ll give those a try, although I really dislike grating chocolate.
Tip for novice truffle makers: Ghirardelli Double Chocolate chips work great for any recipe that calls for adding the chocolate to the just boiled cream/butter mixture. They are readily available, already “broken up”, melt beatifully and give the truffles the right body consistancy for rolling. For small batches I prefer Sarotti or Valrhona, but when I am making 500 or so for the holidays the Ghirardelli are easier to procure in sufficient quantity. (I will not be using them for the Earl Grey truffles, as it seems the cream will be too cool.)
Just thought I’d share mine! 
Enjoy!