Recipe

In honor of Wonka's Chocolate Factory, well this week's Friday Fright related recipe had to be CHOCOLATE!

Chocolate Factory Truffles

Homemade chocolate truffles sound difficult, but really they are not.  ....and they are sooo good.  It's fun to make this type of candy at some time other than around the holidays, so this is a good time of year to whip some up.  The following recipe is basic and cobbled together by me from several sources; there are also variations that are as easy as the plain ones.

8 oz.  good UNSWEETENED chocolate*

About 1 & 1/2 tbsp water

1/4 cup whipping (heavy) cream

3 to 4 oz. soft butter (about 1 stick)

2 to 4 tbsp. sugar (depends on your sweet tooth)

2 large egg yolks

2 tbsp. kirsch or favorite liqueur

1/4 cup good cocoa powder (unsweetened if you like the traditional

     bitter or sweet for a richer truffle)

1.  Carefully melt the chocolate with the water (a double boiler or a hot water bath works with a glass bowl in hot water works well for this), the heat should not be too high.

2.  Add the cream, butter and sugar and whisk well until the chocolate is super shinny, remove from heat and let cool 7 to 10 minutes, stirring a few times to release the heat (I would go into a lot of mumbo-jumbo about candy thermometers, but I rarely use them, I find my finger works just as well).  

3.  While chocolate is cooling, beat the eggs with the kirsch or other flavored liqueur of choice (if you really want to get your chocolate on, get a chocolate liqueur!).  Gently stir this mixture into the chocolate, and beat until very, very shinny.  Let cool for at least 3 hours.  

4.  Scoop up and form into balls like you would a meatball.  Then roll into the cocoa powder and place on a plate (or in storage box) and refrigerate.  Really, that wasn't so hard--and they are GOOD!

*Ghirardelli is widely available.  Online Amazon sells baking chocolate and then there is the wonderful chocolatesource.com

VARIATIONS:

Really, there are endless variations on truffles, as any visit to an high end candy boutique's website will attest too.  You can flavor these with anything that you like the taste of.  A few things that people don't think of that candy makers clean up on include:

Pure Ground Chile

Curry Powders of all sorts

Peppercorns

Various Dried Herbs

Gourmet Salts

Salted Chopped Nuts

The list goes on.

Some of the easiest ways to vary these include:

Changing up the liquor used (flavored vodkas can be useful)

Adding powdered or ground spices to the basic mixture

Adding in citrus zest

Rolling the plain truffles in powdered or ground spices, herbs or nuts

Making them mocha by adding coffee.

Adding in some flavored tea (you do this with cold tea, and use it to melt the chocolate instead of using water

Rolling them in other kinds of chocolate, like shavings.  Or mixing up the toppings like, powdered sugar and cinnamon, or chocolate and coconut or several colors of chocolate.

Adding syrups in place of the sugar (like maple, etc.)

And then there are the molds....

There are all types of molds available for chocolate formations.  The ones above are very cool, very old and very expensive on the secondary market, but plastic molds work just as well.  And there are some nice spooky ones out there!

To use a mold with truffles, you simply pour the chocolate into the molds after whisking in the egg and liqueur mixture and let them stand for 4 hours.  Refrigerate for 15 minutes and them unmold.  Molded truffles don't really need to the rolled in anything, but they can be decorated.  Some folks got really creative with chocolate below for Halloween!

Plastic Frankenstein candy molds