Truffles are delightful, melt-in-mouth, flavoured tiny round rolls of chocolate ganache. You will feel a moment of heavenly joy while having these tiny rolls of chocolate, cream and butter.
Preparing truffles at home is very easy and the best part is that while coating them to give different flavours, we can let children join us. It would be a lot of fun for kids to coat truffles with colourful sprinklers, toasted nuts, cocoa powder or melted chocolate.
Ingredients :
Good quality cooking/baking chocolate and milk cream.
For Truffles we prepare chocolate ganache with 2.5 :1 ratio of chocolate and cream. To make truffles more rich in taste1 tbsp butter also can be added.
For coating- cocoa powder, toasted mixed nuts, brown sugar ,white powered sugar, coffee powder, cinnamon powder, colourful sprinklers, melted chocolate or any other flavour of your choice.
Tips to remember:
- Always remember that water creates disaster if it comes in contact with chocolate while working with them. So keep your bowls completely dry for preparing ganache.
- Good quality chocolate and cream will make a lot of difference in taste and texture of truffles.
- Check rest of the tips before starting the process of ganache here Dark Chocolate Ganache
Process:
Grate/chop chocolate block and keep the shredded pieces in a bowl which is slightly bigger in size. Bigger size bowl will be helpful in mixing ganache evenly.
Pour cream in a separate bowl and heat it on medium flame. The moment it starts bubbling from the sides of the pan and about to reach the boiling stage, pour it immediately into chocolate bowl evenly everywhere so that it can cover the chocolate shredding completely.
Don’t disturb this bowl for 5 minutes. Later, mix this with spatula nicely. With the heat of the cream, chocolate will melt but still if you feel that some chocolate chunks are remaining, you can keep the bowl in a microwave or use double boiler method to reheat the mix for a short time. Again mix the mixture and all the remaining chocolate chunks would be melted.
Cover the bowl with cling wrap to avoid creating a film on top and keep it on room temperature till ganache completely cools down. Once ganache cools down, it will be firm but might still be a little messy affair to prepare truffle balls out of it. So keep the cling wrapped bowl in the fridge till ganache is more firm to be rolled as truffle balls.
How long ganache takes to become firm in the fridge? Well, it will depend upon the settings of your refrigerator. It might take 1/2 an hour to 1 hour. In between, try once by taking a little amount of Ganache and roll it between your palms. If it is still sticky keep it back in the fridge for some more time. But if you are able to roll it, then take out the bowl and start preparing truffle balls! Use a scoop or round measuring spoon for same size truffle balls. Scoop out ganache with spoon and keep it on butter/parchment paper. In between, if ganache is becoming soft, again pop it back in to the fridge for a while.
Now roll each one of these rough balls in between your palms and try to give them spherical shape. Ganache softens due to the heat of our palms . So don’t worry about a neat finish and keep them back in the fridge.
After some time when these balls firm up, take them out and again roll them for slightly neater look.
Now it’s time to give these truffles your choice of flavors. You can roll them with sweet cocoa powder, coffee powder, cinnamon with brown sugar, sprinklers, toasted dry fruits or simply dip them in melted chocolate!!
Truffles can be kept in the fridge for a week and you can freeze them for 3 months.
Truffles are the best gifting options for your relatives and friends during special occasions as no one can beat the taste of fresh homemade Truffles!!!!