A Different Kind of Truffle

As we begin month 5 of this chocolate resolution, it's time to revisit the truffle. Admittedly, I'm going off book with this post (that is, I'm not reading Ewald Notter's The Art of the Chocolatier this week), but I thought it only right to share this off-the-beaten-path chocolate adventure.

I was invited to a theme party this weekend -- Cinco de Mayo and Kentucky Derby combined -- and thought I should bring something chocolate to share. I searched for Mexican desserts and in one of those annoying list-style posts that give you 25+ photos pertaining to your search, each on its own page (click, click, click), I saw brigadeiros.

Now, let's be clear: I know that brigadeiros are a Brazilian dessert. But the idea stuck with me, so I went with it. Close enough geographically, says I (when in reality, it's not that close at all if you look at a map). I digress...

Brigadeiros are similar to truffles in that they are rolled confections, but there's no cream and they are made with cocoa powder instead of chocolate (i.e. with cocoa butter). The primary ingredient is sweetened condensed milk, which develops a caramel (dulce de leche) flavour when cooked. Based on my reading, I understand that the texture of a brigadeiro is more chewy than a ganache truffle (which should be smooth and creamy). 

Now, this is one of those recipes that always scares me a little. You put the ingredients into a pot and cook them on medium to medium high heat until the mixture achieves a fudge-like consistency. When they say you must stir constantly, they mean it -- the risk of ingredients burning is high. So, exhaust fan on bust, lest I set off the smoke detectors and evacuate the building, I began the process of cooking. 

It came together much quicker than expected. The recipe said 10-15 minutes, but by 6 I had reached what I thought was the right consistency. I removed the pot from the heat and immediately scraped the mixture onto a buttered plate to cool. Then I set the mixture, well wrapped, in the fridge for a day, because I read that it is best to roll the brigadeiros in sprinkles on the same day you will eat them so that the sprinkles maintain their crunch. 

Of course, I rolled two small samples. Quality assurance processes are important! To my palate, they needed something. Chris suggested more salt. I agreed and thought about doubling the amount of salt in the recipe if I ever made them again.  

Then the following day, I rolled these truffle-like confections. They mixture was incredibly easy to work with. In no time, 22 of them were lined up like soldiers awaiting their sprinkle coating. Thinking back to the need for more salt, I cracked pink Himalayan salt over them and gave them another quick roll to ensure the salt wouldn't fall off, and then rolled them in sprinkles. While the traditional brigadeiro is rolled in chocolate sprinkles, I also rolled some in multicoloured sprinkles that I had on hand to make them more appropriate for Cinco de Mayo. And then I dropped them in into paper cups to transport to the party.

The result?

As the description stated, they have a chewy texture. It's somewhere between a soft caramel and fudge, but not as sticky. Actually, they remind me of a molasses caramel I made during my professional chocolatier program that gave me a great deal of trouble. It tasted delicious, but it was so soft that the cut caramels slumped into irregular mounds in the 12 hours I left them before enrobing them in chocolate. I had to reform them all before I could complete my assignment! I'm writing this post before going to the party, so here's hoping the briagdeiros don't suffer the same fate!

The caramel notes in these "truffles" come through and the sprinkles give a nice texture contrast. And I think that the flavour has developed since I first tested them. 

Delicious, festive, and fun!

Arriba!

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.

Chocolate Discs and Gianduja Rosettes

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, in November when I flipped through Notter's The Art of the Chocolatier to find inspiration, I settled on a recipe for cointreau butter ganache pralines. The suggested method, though, was completely foreign to me. It called for piping the ganache onto a chocolate disc and then dipping the entire piece into couverture using a fork. While the book has many beautiful photos, there wasn't one of this particular confection. I found myself wondering how precisely that would work and whether you would see a ridge between the disc base and the piped ganache once it was dipped. I decided instead to use my standard truffle method: scoop the ganache and refine the shape by hand before hand-rolling in two thin coats of chocolate. Based on the feedback I received, they were a hit. But the method outlined by Notter stuck in my head and I decided that in the new year I would have to revisit it. And so tonight I am reading about chocolate discs and gianduja rosettes.

Notter suggests that chocolate discs are a common base for a variety of confections. They are formed using tempered couverture chocolate, a disc template, and a piece of acetate. It's also possible to make the discs without a template, but it's difficult to get consistent results. I've watched chocolatiers on YouTube depositing chocolate on one piece of acetate and then carefully laying a second sheet on top, causing the chocolate to spread into a thin disc. This method takes more practice to perfect (kind of like trying to pipe macarons of the same size). 

Notter has a number of recipes that employ these chocolate discs, including one that caught my eye -- "Hidden Hazelnut Pralines." It's a gianduja rosette piped around a sugar-sanded hazelnut on a chocolate disc. 

I've become obsessed with gianduja since taking my professional chocolatier course. It is the most delicious filling imaginable -- the thicker, nuttier, more mature cousin of Nutella. With roasted nuts ground into a paste and mixed with couverture chocolate, it's pure heaven. I've molded it into tiny Easter eggs that I then enrobed in chocolate, I've slabbed it and cut it into squares that were later dipped with a fork, I've pipped it into an Easter bunny. Its flavour, texture, and consistency make it ideal for so many applications -- but I can honestly say that it never occurred to me to pipe it the same way you would buttercream icing. 

Gianduja is quite fluid when it is first made, thanks to the nut paste combining with melted chocolate. As it cools, however, and the chocolate begins to crystallize, the texture thickens. By the time it is fully set (depending on the ratio of nut paste to chocolate), it can be quite firm. The trick, I would imagine, is piping it at exactly the right temperature. Just like there's a sweet spot for piping ganache, still fluid enough to be piped but firm enough to hold its shape, there will be a sweet spot for piping gianduja -- and the only way to find it will be to wait, watch, and test periodically. And of course take the temperature and record it for future reference!

And so in anticipation of an experiment in the not-so-distant future, I'm assembling the necessary tools. Piping bags and tips are no problem. My cake decorating stash has everything I need to pipe gianduja. I also have acetate (food safe, of course) from when I did my chocolatier program (it was on the list of recommended supplies, but because we could choose from a number of techniques for our various assignments, mine went unused). I have couverture and I have nuts. But a disc template? My stash of chocolate molds is pretty impressive, but there's ne'er disc template among them.  

Cue Amazon. It does, after all, have everything you need from A to Z. And it did not let me down. Sure, it took a few tries with the search terms to get exactly what I wanted, but I persevered and was rewarded with the listing for this beauty. As it turns out, you can also buy these in a variety of shapes, including long triangles. That one is used to create decorations for desserts. Once the chocolate begins to set, but before it is fully crystallized, it's possible to manipulate the acetate so that the pieces set with a curve or twist. I'm trying to resist the urge to order the triangle stencil, but the more that I think about it, the more I want to try that as well...

One of my friends always says, "You can't have Barbie without the Malibu Dream House." It's dangerous to take that advice to heart. So, because I have a plan, I'll stick with the circle stencil. For now. 

There are Hidden Hazelnut Pralines in my future. 

 

"I do not think it means what you think it means."

Back when I did my professional chocolatier program, I wrote a blog post titled, "What the heck is a truffle anyway?" On the surface, the term seemed simple, especially for anyone who's enjoyed a Lindt milk chocolate truffle at Christmas (perhaps following a Festive Special at Swiss Chalet, but I digress). 

Throughout the course, "truffle" was used to refer to both bonbons of a particular shape and ganache-based confections generally (including those cut into squares and those molded into a variety of shapes). I remember discussing this with my friend and colleague, the late Robert Campbell. He felt it didn't matter what a truffle was made from, so long as it was produced without a mold and resembled a truffle (the fungus). But the proliferation of "truffles" made from cookies, cookie dough, cake, and other ingredients that are coated in candy melts -- and devoid of any real chocolate -- give me pause. As my thinking on it has evolved, I believe it's part form and part formula, so for me it's a hand-formed, ganache-based confection in a spherical or conical shape. 

As I continue reading Notter's The Art of the Chocolatier, I once again find myself questioning a word I thought I understood: praline. I've always known the term to refer to a caramelized, nut-based confection (one that, in my mind, is crunchy) -- yet in front of me is a recipe for a butter ganache praline that doesn't contain any nuts and definitely isn't crunchy. 

In my head, I can hear Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride saying, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

And so down the rabbit hole I go -- it's hard not to as a researcher. 

As it turns out, there are multiple uses of the term praline. It can indeed refer to a nut-based confection, usually almond or hazelnut, as I had thought (turns out that one is French). There's also an American praline, where pecans are combined with sugar and cream, resulting in a fudge-like confection. And in the Belgian use of the term, praline can refer to any soft centre contained within a chocolate shell. Regarding the latter, pralines have apparently always exhibited significant variety in terms of shape and flavour, are more sophisticated in their decoration than truffles (which tend to be simple, more rustic), and are popular in gift boxes. 

Now, that last description has me thinking. That blueberry iceberg bonbon that I made during my chocolatier program? That seems closer to a praline than a truffle, given that it was comprised of a molded dark chocolate shell hand painted with coloured cocoa butter and filled with a soft blueberry white chocolate filling. 

That leads me to two thoughts:

First, there should be a game called Truffle, Praline, or Bonbon? and the prize should be chocolate.

Second, I wish I could pick Robert's brain in the cafeteria one more time and discuss in depth the term praline. 

Rest easy, friend. You will be missed.

 

Returning to Chocolate

I've been on hiatus from blogging for longer than I realized. It was surprising to log in this morning and see 2018 as the year of my last post. In 2023, I'm hoping to get back into blogging and trying new chocolate techniques, which was a focus of my writing in 2018 when I did my professional chocolatier course. 

The inspiration for this reorientation came late last year. As I was planning my four-piece chocolate box for the year, I turned to Ewald Notter's The Art of the Chocolatier and found a recipe for a cointreau truffle that used butter instead of cream. I decided to try it. I made a half batch and was thrilled with the results -- the ganache was easy to work with and the shelf life would be longer than one made with cream. 

I scooped the centres, refined the shape into a sphere, and then rolled them by hand in two coats of tempered chocolate. They were delicious. 

But while I had followed Notter's recipe, I didn't attempt his method, which called for piping the ganache onto a chocolate disc and then dipping the piece into tempered chocolate. The resulting truffle would have a sort of peaked dome shape. I didn't have the time to experiment with this technique before Christmas, but made a mental note that I should try it in the new year.

The cointreau truffle joined a spiced molasses honeycomb toffee enrobed in chocolate, a salted caramel enrobed in milk chocolate, and a white chocolate fruit and nut cup featuring dried cranberries and pistachios. I packaged 24 boxes to give out to family, friends, and colleagues. They were a hit.

Over Christmas, I reflected on my chocolate training, as well as my desire to continue learning new techniques and to maintain what I've already learned. I decided that the best way to do this wouldn't be to register in another course, but to commit to self-directed study. Notter's book is the assigned reading for Monday nights going forward. And I'm excited to try new recipes and techniques in the not-so-distant future!

And that means, I hope, the return of this blog.

Happy 2023!

 

Pinterest Experiments

I was an early adopter of Pinterest, the online bulletin board where you can pin your inspiration for later access from any computer or handheld device. A few years ago, I even taught a social media course for seniors in which I demonstrated how to set up and use Pinterest. I likened it to the bulletin board my mother had in her laundry room when I was a kid. She would clip useful information, such as explanations of laundry symbols, from magazines and pin it on the bulletin board for future reference. Pinterest is that bulletin board on steroids.

Honestly, it's addictive. I can waste hours on there scrolling through craft and DIY pins, as well as cooking and baking pins, and repinning the most appealing ones to my own boards for later reference. I also pin from other websites when I see something of interest.

Since I love to cook, bake, and craft, I have started testing some of the pins on my board and updating the descriptions to reflect my experience. I post the results to an album on facebook called Pinterest Experiments for my friends to see. This, of course, seems to be common practice -- just this weekend a friend shared the results of one of her tests (sadly, a fail). And one can't forget the popular sites of Pintester and Pinstrosity.

So, this weekend I was inspired to try a recipe for white chocolate lemon truffles, partly because I was in the mood to make something, partly because a friend likes white chocolate and I thought they might make a nice Easter present, and partly because the day before I had purchased cute mini cupcake liners and wanted an excuse to use them. I consulted a few different recipes that I had pinned and settled on one that sounded best, then picked up some white chocolate while getting groceries.

The melting and combining was easy enough and before I knew it my white chocolate ganache was ready to be chilled. I had two hours to wait, so I decided the best use of that time would be to make a box for the truffles. Sure, I could present them in a piece of tupperware, but where's the fun in that? After a quick google, I decided that Aunt Annie's method would work just fine. I carefully measured the size required to fit the paper cups that would hold my truffles and then cut and scored the back of a Rice Crispies box. I folded it into shape, glued the tabs, and held them in place with binder clips. And voila! I had a box. [Note that the picture is a little deceiving --the top of the box (seen on the right) is 1/8" larger in width and length to fit over the bottom (seen on the left).]

And then because this didn't take nearly long enough, I watched a foreign film called The Lunchbox on Netflix (by no means an endorsement, though I do like the looks of an Indian lunch box and sort of want one).

When it was time to scoop and roll my truffles, I did run into a minor issue. The mixture was too soft to hold its shape. So, I scooped out portions to make 1" balls, tossed them quickly in icing sugar so that they wouldn't stick, and let them slump on a baking sheet lined with foil. Once I was done, I put the sheet in the freezer for 10 minutes before attempting to roll them again. This time, they held their shape. Success!

Naturally, I tasted two for quality assurance purposes before packaging any for giving. It was the right thing to do.

Now, I had intended to cover the box that I'd made either with paper or washi tape, but once I saw it put together, I decided that I liked the look of the unadorned Rice Crispies box. So, instead, I just removed the binder clips, lined the box with wax paper, added 6 mini cupcake liners, and popped the truffles inside.

Of course, the final step was to tie it with a ribbon (and then put it in the fridge so that they won't melt before they are delivered!)

So, all in all, this was a great Pinterest experiment. I'm sure that I will make the truffles again. In fact, I think that in the future, I will try them with different flavours. As I read through the comments on the various truffles recipes, a few ideas stood out: key lime, orange, and coconut. It's hard not to go into full out truffle production, to be honest!

What flavours do you think would work with white chocolate truffles?