Truffe au Chocolat

At the end of my senior year in high school (Class of 2010!), my French teacher decided that we have a full blown French cuisine pot-luck party on 19th of May, the day of my birthday. (The picture on the right is a cake bouquet my family surprised me with. Not much relevant to the story but it's so cute!) Incredibly flattered that she’d decided to organize a French party on this day of all days, I grinned and let my classmates make a list of things to cook. Only five minutes later I found out that I had to cook too, something French, and the food would count for part of my final exam grade. Happy Birthday to moi… Eh?

I signed up for “chocolate covered petite madeleines, topped with a layer of nuts”. Sounds extravagant, doesn’t it? What I was planning on doing was running to Publix, grabbing a box of petite madeleine cakes (if you haven’t tried them, try them now. Your life without madeleines is like lemonade without the lemons, skydiving without the parachute, shoe stores without the clearance racks. My point: try them), some pre-made fondue chocolate, and a bag of nuts. The idea was to melt the chocolate on the cakes and just sprinkle chopped nuts on top, then refrigerate. Easy, and also basically cheating because I wouldn’t make the cakes nor the fondue from scratch.

Has it ever happened to you when your guilt takes the form of Gandhi and beats you over the head with a stick? Ok, good, I’m not too different then. And of course you’ve got your mothers who always guilt trip you into taking “the road less travelled by”. After some contemplation, I decided to make home-made chocolate truffles, better known as “Truffe au Chocolat”.

Since I’d never made any form of chocolate at home before, I chose a basic French truffle recipe from http://frenchfood.about.com/od/desserts/r/basictruffles.htm. However, the preparation pictures are my own.

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup heavy cream

• 12 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped into very small pieces

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

• 1/3 cup premium cocoa

Preparation:

In a small saucepan over medium heat, bring the heavy cream just to a boil. Remove from the heat immediately. Add the chopped chocolate and vanilla extract and stir until the mixture – ganache - is completely smooth.

Chill the ganache until it is hard enough to roll into balls. Measuring out a heaping teaspoon, quickly roll the ganache into a ball. Roll the ball in the cocoa powder and chill.

Makes 16 servings.

I doubled this recipe and took truffles as a treat to all of my classes. Result? I had no idea I was living a life without the lemons, parachute, and clearance rack. Truffe au Chocolat turned out wonderfully rich. They’re not like your average Hershey’s bar; instead they explode into a silky wave when bitten. They are best enjoyed when eaten in nibbles. Dark chocolate lovers, like myself, try extra cacao percent in your chocolate. I coated my truffles with French vanilla cocoa powder, there are lots more flavors you can pick from. Nuts, dried fruit, jam, anything that makes your mouth water, can be mixed into the truffle batter.

In case you were wondering, I got a 100 on my French final.