Truffle photos!

I have finally gotten my photo-blogging act together and managed to capture images of something I intended to blog about. Of course, these chocolate truffles were somehow doomed to delays all along. They were originally destined to be distributed to my colleagues at GlobalGiving on V-day. Then an old friend showed up from CA on the 13th and foiled that plan. And besides, V-day was a snow day here in Washington, and various people were out of the office as well. So they dawdled into the office on the 15th when there were even fewer people there.

However, I think they were pretty successful. The dark chocolate ones had a wasabi ginger dark chocolate ganache, dark chocolate covering, and toasted sesame seeds. The milk chocolate ones had dark chocolate/vanilla ganache and were trimmed with lavendar salt.



The recipe I used was from Epicurious, of course, and I split the ganache in two bowls, added powdered wasabi and ginger (after deciding that fresh wasabi and ginger could queer the consistency of the ganache, and the recipe seemed to make it clear that the ganache teetered on a delicate equilibrium) to one bowl, and vanilla to the other. I used Callebaut chocoloate in big bricks (from Whole Foods) for the chocolate, and pulverized it in the food processor to make the ganache (I didn't see how else to get that huge quantity of chocolate to melt in heated cream).

One interesting thing I noticed that the microwave tempering works quite well, but that when the tempered chocolote cools off, you are in danger of havind the chocolate get dusty (the look that Heshey's has often). As I dipped the truffles in the gloppier, too cool chocolate, it hardened with that dusty look. Things improved when I zapped the tempered chocolate ever so slightly again.

All in all it was lots of fun, although I had to go at it over sever nights to ensure it set at every stage. I have every intention of making more creative flavors--curry insides with coconut trimming, or berbere insides with pine nut toppings, something with pink peppercorns ... the possibilities are endless.