beginner truffle how-to, from Sis

From my sister, a part-time chocolatier, in response to “what’s the easiest chocolate thing I can make”:

I’ll try to keep this a reasonable length. I’m sorry if I fail.

So, the easiest thing for you is probably a piped cream ganache, which is what I normally do. Basically your recipe is (with everything by weight):

1 part liquefier: this includes heavy cream and any liquid flavorings. If you aren’t using liquid flavoring (liquer, extract), then it’s just your cream. If you do use liquid flavoring, a good place to start is 5:1 cream:flavoring.

2 parts dark chocolate OR 2.5 parts milk or white chocolate (chopped and still tempered). I’ve never noticed a really significant difference in types of chocolate here. I’m sure it does matter, but it comes out tasty either way. The only place I really care about how fancy my chocolate is is for dipping, where my advice is to not use chocolate chips – they’re formulated to stay somewhat cohesive when melted and are just a pain to dip in.

.25-.30 parts glucose syrup (generally light corn syrup for me, can also be a flavoring like honey or molasses)

Half as much butter as liquid flavoring, if necessary.

Bring the cream and glucose syrup to a boil. Pour it on the chopped chocolate. Give it a minute to melt the chocolate, then stir to emulsify. Pour out, cover with plastic wrap, and let sit for about an hour until firm and plastic. Table it lightly until it forms stiff peaks, but no further or it will be difficult to pipe. If you let it sit long enough and were using well-tempered chocolate, you may be able to skip tabling. If you let it sit too long and were using well-tempered chocolate, it may be too hard to pipe at all. Pipe it into balls if you can, or just use a spoon and your hands. There’s not a real difference in result here, I just think piping’s easier.

The easiest way to finish them is to roll them in cocoa powder or chopped nut or something along those lines. If you’re doing this, you can do so with the freshly formed truffles, rather than waiting for them to finish crystallization. If you don’t want to do this, or your ganache is soft enough you think it’s a bad idea texture-wise, then your best bet for tempering is just barely melt the chocolate – don’t let it get hot enough to lose its temper (oh the puns), just get most of the chocolate melted and then stir without heat to melt the rest.

I think the easiest way to get good flavors are to substitute for the cream or glucose syrup. Honey and molasses have both worked really well to replace corn syrup. Nut milks give a really great flavor replacing cream – blend 1 part hazelnut with 2 parts water, strain it with moistened cheesecloth or just a strainer, and use as a direct substitute for cream. Other nuts will work the same, though you might have to adjust the nut to water ratio based on the fat/protein content of the nuts, to best approximate cream.

So, I did indeed fail at making that short. Oops. Hopefully that’s what you wanted to know, though, and I didn’t spend too much time repeating things you’ve already heard.

blackberry cobbler

ingredients

shortcake-style topping

• 8 oz water
• 6 oz sugar
• 11 oz self-rising flour
• 3/4 t cinnamon
• 8 T butter
• 3/8 c dry buttermilk
• 3/4 t baking soda

filling

• 42 oz blackberries
• 3 T corn starch (dissolved in 2 T water)
• 1/3 c sugar (to taste)

process

notes

• We used a 13×9 pan.
• We precooked the filling.
• There was much too much topping for me. I would decrease the topping by half or more. Juliana thought it was perfect.

cobblers of July 2011

We’ve been on a cobbler kick. Blueberry. Blackberry. Cherry. Yesterday, Hools came close to making one with passion fruit and mango. The blueberry was based on America’s Test Kitchen’s recipe . The blackberry came out of our Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book (p 272). The cherry is straight from Bittmans HCE (p 883).

blueberry cobbler

filling

• 1/2 c sugar
• 1 T cornstarch
• 1/4 t cinnamon
• 1/8 t salt
• 30 oz blueberries
• 1 1/2 t lemon zest
• 1 T lemon juice

topping

• 5 oz AP flour
• 2 T cornmeal
• 3 T crystallized ginger, minced
• 1/4 c sugar
• 2 t baking powder
• 1/4 t baking soda
• 1/4 t salt
• 4 T butter
• 1 t lemon juice
• 1/3 c milk
• 1/2 t vanilla extract
• 1/4 t ground ginger

1. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 375 degrees.
2. For the filling: Stir sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, and salt together in large bowl. Add berries and mix gently with rubber spatula until evenly coated; add lemon zest and juice and mix to combine. Transfer berry mixture to 9-inch glass pie pan, place pie pan on rimmed baking sheet, and bake until filling is hot and bubbling around edges, about 25 minutes.
3. For the biscuit topping: Whisk flour, cornmeal, crystallized ginger, 1/4 cup sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in large bowl to combine. Whisk melted butter, milk, lemon juice, and vanilla in small bowl. Mix remaining 2 teaspoons sugar and ground ginger in second small bowl and set aside. One minute before berries come out of the oven, add wet ingredients to dry ingredients; stir with rubber spatula until just combined and no dry pockets remain.
4. To assemble and bake cobbler: Remove berries from oven; increase oven temperature to 425 degrees. Pinch off 8 equal-sized pieces biscuit dough and place on hot berry filling, spacing them at least 1/2 inch apart (they should not touch). Sprinkle each mound of dough with ginger-sugar. Bake until filling is bubbling and biscuits are golden brown on top and cooked through, 15 to 18 minutes. Cool cobbler and serve.

comments

An excellent cobbler. We each had minor issues, though. I thought that the berries had a kind of strange aftertaste (from the cornstarch, I think), and Hools wasn’t a fan of the ginger in the crust.

blackberry cobbler

On p 272 of BHG. It was the cherry cobbler recipe made with blackberries. This one came out too sweet, but otherwise nice.

cherry cobbler

On p 883 of HCE. The blueberry cobbler recipe made with cherries. I only mixed 1/4 c of sugar into the cherries (instead of 1/2 c). Also, we precooked the cherries until they started to give off juice (because they started out frozen). The crust spread out a fair amount, which surprised me, and tastes more like cookie than like shortcake.

It was delicious. The best so far, but not great, yet… Hools thinks we need to double our crust. I think we need to double the fruit.

Baker’s brownie recipe

• 4 oz unsweetened chocolate
• 6 oz butter
• 2 c sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 c all-purpose flour

1. heat oven to 350 F. grease pan (used Baker’s Edge Brownie Pan).
2. melt butter. mix in chocolate until melted. blend in eggs and vanilla. stir in flour. spread into pan. (batter is very thick.)
3. bake 30 min (or until toothpick comes out clean).

Milky Way variation

press 24 Milky Way minis into the batter at equally spaced intervals.

“chocolate bar” brownies

This recipe came with the Edge Brownie Pan. The resulting brownies didn’t seem like a traditional brownie to me—more about halfway between a chocolate bar and a brownie.

• 12 tbsp unsalted butter
• 5 oz bittersweet chocolate
• 1 7/8 c sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 c all purpose flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 c bittersweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Spray pan w/ nonstick spray.
2. Melt butter and 5 oz chocolate.
3. Stir in sugar. Stir in eggs.
4. Add flour and salt and mix until just combined
5. Mix in chocolate chips.
6. Spread batter into pan.
7. Bake for about 35-40 minutes.

baked plantains

BRW, Caribbean and Central America, p 623

I followed the recipe exactly w/ 3 plantains. The sugar and the butter didn’t penetrate or coat the plantain as well as I’d hoped. Next time, I think I’ll gash the flesh many times horizontally, in addition to the large split down the middle.

oatmeal cookies with dried apricots

HCE, p 894-895

We followed the recipe (though we creamed and mixed everything by hand) and added 240 g of chopped dried apricots. Juliana gives the cookies two thumbs up!

luxurious weekend lunch

cream of tomato soup, HCE, p 130-131
salmon roasted in butter, HCE, p 583
roast asparagus, HCE, p 258-259
Jim Lahey’s no-work bread, HCE, p 833
chocolate-caramel tart, HCE, p 940 (chocolate tart crust, HCE, p 930; vanilla pastry cream flavored with chocolate, HCE, p 943; chocolate glaze, HCE, p 921; creamy caramel sauce, p 922)

• cream of tomato soup: I followed the recipe exactly. It was delicious.
• salmon roasted in butter: I followed the recipe exactly. It was delicious, though I think I like grilled salmon much more, both in texture and in flavor.
• roasted asparagus: I followed the recipe exactly. Again, it was delicious. Again, I prefer grilled asparagus to roasted asparagus.
• Jim Lahey’s no-work bread: I followed the recipe more or less exactly. (The “more or less” refers to all the travel and associated temperature fluctuations it experienced during the first rise.)
• chocolate-caramel tart: This was the most difficult. I’d never made anything like a chocolate tart before, so nearly all the steps were new. I pressed the tart crust (quite unevenly, unfortunately) into a round cake pan rather than rolling it out and placing it into a tart pan. Baking that was straightforward. Making the pastry cream was also easy, and it turned out excellent. Making the caramel was the biggest challenge, and one that I didn’t entirely overcome. I thought that I followed the recipe exactly, but clearly not. At first, the caramel wasn’t browning, even though it was nearly at the target temperature (245 F). Then, all the liquid evaporated and I was left with a grainy sugar-cream paste. Finally, the sugar melted rather suddenly and browned. When it cooled, it was hard. I’d gone past soft caramel and made a hard candy. Next time, for the caramel, I’ll heat up the sugar until it’s a light caramel, and then I’ll add the cream; hopefully, that will make a softer caramel. Finally, making the chocolate sauce went well, though I accidentally used granulated sugar instead of confectioners’ and nearly double what the recipe called for. This made for an extremely sweet and slightly runny chocolate glaze. Because it was poured on top of the tart, I think this was more a change of style from the original than an actual mistake.

chocolate layer cake with cream cheese and fudge sauce

chocolate layer cake: HCE, p 911-912

cream cheese frosting

• 4 oz butter
• 8 oz cream cheese
• 2 c confectioner’s sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Have butter and cream cheese softened (at room temperature). Beat butter and cream cheese together until smooth. Mix in vanilla extract. Keep mixing and add powdered sugar slowly until you reach desired sweetness (perhaps more than 2 c). Also, the recipe is very amenable to more vanilla or other flavoring (e.g. citrus, cinnamon, chocolate, ginger, coconut).

Malley’s Chocolates Famous Fudge Sauce

http://www.malleys.com/ProductDetail.aspx?ID=6e76165d-e623-4d3c-ada7-7cca5bfa69e5

brownies

HCE, p 881

I had to use an 8-inch round baking pan instead of the 8- or 9-inch square pan called for by the recipe. This made the brownies 25%-60% thicker than intended. I also baked them only 20m, though they had set in the middle. This made for incredibly fudgy

Also, they may have been a bit too sweet (though no one said anything). I just realized that I used bittersweet chocolate when it called for unsweetened, but I didn’t reduce the sugar. Whoops!