Perfect Spheres of Joy

I'm actually writing this entry while sailing to Newfoundland. It's finally that time of year when I make my annual summer pilgrimage home. Traditionally, I would take a night crossing over, picking up a Big Mac combo for the road (or the ocean, if we're being literal), and then a day crossing back, with a bologna sandwich as my traditional meal. Things are a bit different this year because I rescheduled my original booking due to an important milestone deadline for a project I'm working on. Consequently, I find myself on a day crossing with a packed lunch.

What's in that lunch? Well, first, let me tell you that it isn't nearly as spectacular as most of the packed lunches that I saw in the queue waiting to board. You can tell the Newfoundlanders from the visitors by the size and contents of their cooler. Actually, probably the presence of a cooler at all is a tell. I watched as one lady assembled her lunch for a family of three right before boarding started. She filled a large shopping basket with crackers, cheese strings, beef jerky, small bags of chips, pudding, fruit, beverages... There was no end to the snacks! My sister would applaud her style and efforts, and tell me that I'm never prepared.

I am a Newfoundlander though, so you won't catch me on a ferry without a lunch. Complaining about the food prices on Marine Atlantic is a sacred tradition that must be upheld. I have a peanut butter and jam sandwich (which I affectionately refer to as a PBJ), a bag of Cruncheez from my favourite Old Dutch dealer, and two Lindt truffles, with a can of diet ginger ale (Canada Dry, just as BNL would want it). 

Until recently, Lindt truffles were 100% a Christmas thing for me. I would mark the start of the festive season with a Festive Special from Swiss Chalet, which includes a box of five, and I would have a few on Christmas Day from my stocking. (Truth is, I was devastated when Swiss Chalet replaced the Toblerone bar with Lindt truffles. I still wish they would switch back. But I digress...)

The truffle flavours, of course, were pretty standard -- milk, dark, white, caramel... Dependable, for sure, but predictable.

Imagine my surprise, then, the first time I went to the Lindt store in Halifax. I'd heard from a friend that it existed, but my trips to Halifax tend to centre around the downtown core, so I had never visited the box stores that developed on the outskirts of town. That is, until two years ago when my boyfriend and I made our first trip to Halifax for a weekend getaway. I was on a waterslide for the first time in maybe 30+ years, we ate at my favourite Halifax restaurant, and we made a pilgrimage to the Lindt store. 

I had never seen so many different flavours of Lindt truffles before. Naturally, I wanted to try them all and it's easy enough to do exactly that because you can pack your own gossamer bag full of truffles. We decided to get two of every flavour so that we could sample them together and then fill the rest of our small bag with our favourites (like dark chocolate sea salt). We did this again the following year, but got smart and bought the larger bag of 75 truffles. 

Now, not surprisingly, there have been a few flavours that I am more jazzed to try than he is. Among them on the last trip were coconut, mango, and matcha. And it's the coconut and matcha ones that I have here with me now. 

The matcha was of interest to me because I tried making my own a few months ago. While I was happy with the flavour, the texture wasn't ideal. The Lindt version was, of course, incredibly smooth. With a white chocolate shell and ganache, it was overly sweet and the matcha flavour wasn't as prominent as I would have liked it to be. It was just too subtle for my taste. (And what's with the air bubble in the centre?)

The coconut, however, was perfection. It had a milk chocolate shell with a white chocolate ganache that was so creamy it was hard to believe it was made with chocolate. The coconut flavour was present but not overpowering. It was a silky smooth, perfect sphere of joy. 

It would be impossible for a hand-rolled truffle to be so perfectly formed and have such a silky ganache filling (it wouldn't be firm enough to shape and dip in chocolate). But it may surprise you to know that you actually can make a Lindt truffle dupe at home. You see, you can buy trays of pre-formed truffle shells to speed up production. You simply fill them with the flavoured centre of your choice and then cap the little opening with some tempered chocolate, creating a sort of belly button. In most cases, a chocolatier would then roll or dip these in another coating of chocolate, but it isn't necessary (and isn't done with Lindt). 

One tip on the Lindt truffles though: like the chocolate I referenced a few weeks ago, the shells soften in the heat and the centres will actually become liquid. If that appeals to you, then you can stop reading right now, but if you prefer the snap of the shell and the creamy centre, then store them in the fridge in an airtight container during the summer and pull them out for a half hour to come to room temperature before eating them. 

So far, I think my favourite Lindt truffle has been the caramel and sea salt one. How about you? What's your favourite Lindt truffle flavour? Share it in the comments below!

Trendy Flavours

Turn on any baking or dessert challenge on the Food Network and you're likely to find the competitors incorporating ube into their creations. Ube ice cream, ube cake, ube pie, ube donuts... The results are usually a vibrant purple colour. As for the flavour, I can't personally comment, since I've never tried making a yam-based confection or dessert. 

Before ube, it was yuzu (a citrus flavour). And before yuzu, matcha was all the rage. You get the picture.

Now, as I work my way through The Art of the Chocolatier by Ewald Notter, I find that very few of his recipes incorporate what would be considered trendy flavours. The majority are what I would consider to be standards or classics. But there are a few that reflect flavours that were likely trendy at the time of publication in 2011 -- including passion fruit and "exotic" curry pralines. 

I haven't been one for trendy flavours in my chocolate, but during my professional chocolatier program, I got it in my head that one of the recipes I would develop was a matcha truffle. I had forgotten about this idea until recently. Remember that decluttering kick I've been on? Among my baking supplies, I found a bottle of matcha ginger powder I had bought for that very purpose. I remember making a latte with it one day and enjoying it, but the matcha truffle never materialized. You see, the program outlined requirements for different centres and decorations, and as I worked through the combinations, I didn't need another truffle. The matcha ginger powder went into my cupboard for later. And later never came.

Until now.

Today, I was contemplating what to do with some leftover white chocolate. I didn't have a lot of it -- only 42 grams. It wasn't enough to make a bar, but I also didn't want to buy more. So I just stared at it for a bit and that's when I remembered my idea for a matcha truffle. It's a little unconventional to make such a small batch of truffles, but if you understand the ratio of chocolate to cream/butter and have a kitchen scale, it's doable. I dug into the back of my spice cupboard and pulled out the matcha ginger powder.

I tossed the white chocolate into a small bowl and added an appropriate amount of salted butter. Then I melted the two together using a very low heat to ensure the white chocolate didn't burn. I stirred until the two were perfectly combined and then I added some matcha ginger powder. I wasn't sure how much I would need to achieve the right flavour so I started with one rounded dash (side note: if you didn't know, a dash is an actual measurement you can buy measuring implements for dash, pinch, and smidgen). I tested the flavour and then added another rounded dash. Another taste and I was happy with the flavour. The colour, however, was another story.

Any time I've seen matcha, it's been a fairly vibrant green colour. The mixture in front of me looked more grey than green. It was not appetizing. So I did something I don't normally do -- I took some green food colouring out of the cupboard and added one drop to my tiny bowl of ganache. It mixed in quickly and made the colour slightly more palatable. 

I let the ganache set up before scooping and rolling the truffles. My tiny bowl of ganache produced 4 truffles, which I rolled in a combination of icing sugar and matcha ginger powder. 

Verdict? Not bad. The ginger hits you first and then mellows into the matcha. The powdered sugar helps to balance the "spice" of the ginger and the "earthy bitterness" of the matcha. The texture of the ganache isn't quite perfect because of the matcha ginger powder (and maybe the food colouring), but it isn't unpleasant. Next time (if there is one), I might try a cream-based ganache. 

All things considered, I think this was a pretty good flavour combination. And I'm happy to finally have taken the time to bring the idea to life. 

And that's what this year of chocolate is all about.