A sick girl's craving: Dark and white chocolate truffles

Since last week a craving for chocolate truffles started to grow inside me. It was strongly influenced by Leonor's Flagrante Delícia post on'caramel truffles' and by the provoking post made by Glaucia which reminded me how much I love to have chocolate truffles for breakfast. In Portuguese only here

Even if I am at home because I am sick with one of the worst flus of all times, I just couldn't stop myself from making chocolate truffles. I am a quite experienced chocolate truffle maker and I feel as I have been making them for more than a thousand years already. However, today it was very difficult to make chocolate truffles and each part of the operation took at least half a day instead of two hours. I must confess that it was not easy to make truffles being sick. Another difficulty was caused by my will to eat both white and dark chocolate truffles. The bad quality of the white chocolate I used in the white ganache became an extra difficulty as the ganache wouldn't set at all, not even after a night in the freezer.


( The dark truffles after their chocolate bath)

Even surrounded by difficulties I made the truffles and the result was pretty acceptable. The white chocolate was definitely a mistake but the look and the taste were still great since they were mixed with dark chocolate. I very seldom use cream only to make the truffle as I prefer to work with yolks, butter and sugar instead of cream but my urgency forced me into a short cut. The results are: dark chocolate truffles with a white chocolate filling and white chocolate truffle with nougat filling. I used danish nougat and Danish semi sweet chocolate with 57% cocoa solids by Anton Berg. Quite good chocolate I must say.
I also used Dronning Hvit Sjokolade by Norwegian chocolatier Freia, which was a mistake, as mentioned, since the white ganache didn't set. Freia, no more!



The nougat tasted delicious as I used 40% hazelnut nougat with a 57% cocoa chocolate. It is so easy to make your own home made Nutella after all, and you can also make it less sweet by using darker chocolates with higher amounts of cocoa solids and keep a higher amounts of hazelnut as well. Remember that Nutella and its similars carry between 4% and 7% of hazelnut only while in a home made version you can easily double this amount.



White Chocolate Filling

100 grams white chocolate
50 ml heavy cream

Break the chocolate into small pieces and lay the pieces on a glass recipient. In a pan cook the cream when it boils transfer to the glass recipient, over the chocolate pieces. Let it stand for one or two minutes before mixing cream and chocolate together to make the ganache. Mix well to incorporate cream and chocolate completely. Let the ganache cool slightly and refrigerate it for two or three hours. Take the ganache from the refrigerator and using a spoon make small balls, one at a time, and roll them with the palm of your hands. Must be fast because the ganache balls will melt very easily with the heat of your hands. You can grease your hands with some butter which will help with the rolling. Lay the molded truffles on a tray layered with parchment paper. After the balls are finished transfer the tray to the refrigerator and let it stay refrigerated for 3 hours or over night.



Nougat Filling

60 grams semi sweet chocolate (57% cocoa)
50 grams Danish Nougat
40 ml heavy cream

Break the chocolate into small pieces and cut nougat in small pieces and lay the pieces of the chocolate in a glass recipient. In a double boiler cook the cream with the nougat and when it boils transfer to the glass recipient, over the chocolate pieces. Let it stand for one or two minutes before mixing cream mixture and chocolate together to make the nougat ganache. Mix well to incorporate cream and chocolate completely. Let the ganache cool slightly and refrigerate it for two or three hours. Take the ganache from the refrigerator and using a spoon make small balls, one at a time, and roll them with the palm of your hands. Must be fast because the ganache balls will melt very easily with the heat of your hands. You can grease your hands with some butter which will help with the rolling. Lay the molded truffles on a tray layered with parchment paper. After the balls are finished transfer the tray to the refrigerator and let it stay refrigerated for 3 hours or over night.


(White and nougat truffles waiting for their chocolate bath)

Coatings

100 grams white chocolate branco
100 gramas semi sweet chocolate (57% cocoa)

Melt chocolate in a double boiler, one type of chocolate at a time, and transfer the melted chocolate to a glass or another cold surface pan or pot where it will be temperate. Chocolates have to be temperate before they can be used to coat. The process involves removing the air from the melted chocolate and reaching the right temperature in which the chocolate can be used. If you know how to temperate chocolate it is easy for you to know when the chocolate is ready to cover the truffle if you are not familiar with the tempering chocolate you can find how in many books. Here I will be very brief since there are many ways of doing it correctly which will lead to the same results. Mainly you have to use a spatula and spread the melted chocolate like butter on a big piece of bread on the cool surface where it was layered. Spread it from one side to the other moving it softly and lifting the spatula to remove the air from the chocolate every now and then. The chocolate is ready for use when the temperature is that of your body, when you touch it and it is not cold nor warm.

Dip the ganache ball and with the help of a fork roll the ball on chocolate to coat the entire surface of the balls. remove the ball with the help of a fork and transfer them to a tray with parchment paper.

The chocolate might start to harden while you are coating the balls and in this case you have to stop the process of coating and melt the chocolate again. You must repeat the entire process of melting and tempering the chocolate before you can continue the coating the ganache balls. After the ball were coated in chocolate they must be refrigerate once more, for 15 to 20 minutes and after that they can be kept in room temperature if the ambient is not very warm, but it is safer to keep them refrigerate a little longer.

You can coat the white ganache with the dark chocolate or with white chocolate. The same with the nougat which can have also white or dark chocolate coating. Since these truffles are coated with chocolate they don't need to roll the truffle in cocoa powder but you still can sprinkle some cocoa powder just for the look. Coated truffles are more resistant to room temperature and to finger touch than non-coated truffles.

You can make 25 to 30 truffle with this recipe.


(The material used to make these truffles)