Yes! This is as easy as it gets. All you chocoholics out there, listen up! Here’s a simple way to knock the socks off anyone you want to impress. These homemade chocolate truffles look delicious and are very very very very smooth and chocolatey. And the best part is that they’re so simple to make!

Boil a packet of fresh cream. Pour over a bowl of chopped cooking chocolate (which you can easily get in Nilgiris). Let it sit for half a minute and then start stirring. It should look something like this…




From June 09

Yes, this is the same recipe as you would normally make for chocolate ganache which can be used to fill and cover cakes. But once it reaches this smooth consistency, let it cool a while and then pop it in the freezer for sometime.

Try and keep it in the freezer for at least half an hour. Here at home, Saboor wouldn’t let me keep it inside for even twenty minutes! The first time I made this, it was a big mess. I scooped spoonfuls of the ganache and rolled it around an almond but it started melting in my hand itself. No problem, I licked it off, but then I had to give up on creating something which looked as good as it tasted. Of course, the whole plate got over in less than a minute. Maybe thirty seconds!

This time, I decided not to use almonds. I suddenly remembered my trusty old piping bag. I fitted it with a star nozzle, pushed some of the slightly hardened ganache inside it and piped out swirls of chocolate.




From June 09

As you can see, these have already started melting.




From June 09

So pipe them out quickly. I didn’t feel like greasing the plate but if you want these truffles to slide out easily, then its a good idea. These truffles had to be scraped off with a spoon and once again, the plate was empty in mere seconds. Luckily, I remembered to take pictures before showing the plate to the kids!

This chocolate ganache has many uses. The initial runny version can be used to cover cakes. When it hardens, you can use it to pipe rosettes as I have done. I think my truffles need more chocolate because they don’t seem to be getting hard enough. Or we’re not leaving them alone that long!

If you can get them hard enough and if you don’t really mind messy hands, do try making the original chocolate truffles which are made by rolling around small portions of the ganache into perfect rounds which are then dipped in cocoa powder. The bitterness of the cocoa gives way into the sweetness of the truffle inside and that is surely like a bite of heaven!

The bitter cocoa covering will not be appreciated at home so I didn’t bother to do it. But anyway, I got to lick the bowl clean and that happened only because the kids were watching TV and didn’t know that I wasn’t washing up in the kitchen!

A wee bit of history about truffles, only if you’re interested!

A chocolate truffle is a type of chocolate confectionery, traditionally made with a chocolate ganache center coated in chocolate or cocoa powder, usually in a spherical, conical, or curved shape. Other fillings may replace the ganache: cream, melted chocolate, caramel, nuts, almonds, berries, or other assorted sweet fruits, nougat, fudge, or toffee, mint, chocolate chips, marshmallow, and, popularly, liquor.

They are named for their resemblance to the truffle fungus.

The chocolate truffle was first created by M. Dufour in Chambery, France in December 1895. [1] . They reached a wider public with the establishment of the Prestat chocolate shop in London by Antoine Dufour in 1902, which still sells ‘Napoleon III’ truffles to the original recipe [2] . There are now three main types of chocolate truffles: American, European, and Swiss:

* The “American truffle” is a half-egg shaped chocolate-coated truffle, a mixture of dark or milk chocolates with butterfat and, in some cases, hardened coconut oil. Joseph Schmidt, a San Francisco chocolatier, and founder of Joseph Schmidt Confections, is credited with its creation in the mid-1980s.[3]
o A Canadian variation of the American truffle, known as the Harvey truffle, includes the addition of graham cracker crumbs and peanut butter. Other American companies may shape their truffles similar to that of peanut butter cups.
* The “European truffle” is made with syrup and a base made up of cocoa powder, milk powder, fats, and other such ingredients to create an oil-in-water type emulsion.
* The “Swiss truffle” is made by combining melted chocolate into a boiling mixture of dairy cream and butter, which is poured into molds to set before sprinkling with cocoa powder. Unlike the previous two kinds of truffles, these have a very short shelf-life and must be consumed within a few days of making.[4]

Nowadays, all over the globe, chocolate is eaten in various, solid forms such as truffles, white chocolate, dark chocolate, milk chocolate and as a topping on biscuits and cakes. Possibly the most luxurious form of all – the chocolate truffle – has a rather recent history. A French invention, the original chocolate truffle was merely a ball of ganache, chocolate and cream, often flavoured and rolled in cocoa. It was named after the black truffle fungus because of its physical resemblance. From this it has been developed with many ganache fillings and liqueurs and has been coated with different nuts, paprika, peppercorns or simply solid chocolate. Modern chocolatiers are constantly inventing new truffle recipes for the ever-growing truffle-adoring public.

Source: Wikipedia