This weekend I found myself sitting in a library with several small children, a dozen or so women and a couple of men -- all their to learn the secrets of chocolate from Antonia, chocolate connoisseur and owner of Oohlalachocolaterie.I'd stumbled into the Brighton Foodies' Festival, where I was about to learn how to make one of those fabulously useful, multi-purpose recipes that result in a whole range of dishes that really impress: chocolate ganache. Ganache can be used as an icing, it can be used to sandwich cakes together and has many other tasty applications. But perhaps most impressively, it can be used to make mouth-watering after dinner truffles in just a few minutes. Here's how.
You'll need these things:
- 150 ml cream (whipping cream works best but you can use most other sorts)
- 300g chocolate (a two-to-one mixture of plain and milk is ideal)
- optional: icing sugar or ground nuts to coat the truffles, booze of your choice to fill them!
and you'll need to do this with them:
- Melt the two types of chocolate together in a bowl. This is best done in a microwave: just put the chocolate in for ten second bursts, taking it out to stir very gently after each burst until it's completely melted. Be gentle with it! Too much stirring will affect the texure. If you don't have a microwave, you can place the chocolate in a glass bowl over a saucepan of boiling water and stir gently till smooth.
- When the chocolate is smooth, gently add the cream
- Leave the mixture to cool
- Shape it into truffle-sized portions, and roll them in the icing sugar, nuts or other optional coating of your choice.
And there you have your almost-instant truffles! Once you've made a few, why not give them a professional touch by presenting them in gift bags or in decorative boxes? Your friends will love you forever.
4 comments: