Chocolate Truffles
Active Time: 0 Hours 30 Minutes
Inactive Time: 1 Hours 0 Minutes
Total Time: 1 Hours 30 Minutes
Chocolate truffles are an incredibly decedent dessert that work exceptionally well for gifts of all occasions, parties or a quick after-dinner dessert.
The chocolate truffle recipe below shows a basic method of melting chocolate, for the best results you should learn chocolate tempering.
Chocolate truffles are essentially made of a ganache (a fancy term for a mixture of heavy cream, chocolate and a flavoring liqueur) and butter with an outer coating. The outside can be anything from melted chocolate, cocoa powder, nuts and more.
The truffle recipe provided here is relatively simple to make and can be easily modified to make a practically unlimited number of different styles of chocolate truffles. Try putting coconut flakes on the outside, using different types of chocolate for the dipping, adding a variety of different liqueurs and flavors to the inside cream, use a darker chocolate for deeply flavored, dark chocolate truffles, let your imagination go wild!
Ingredients
Ganache
- 12 oz. chocolate, bittersweet or semi-sweet
- 4 Tbsp. unsalted butter
- 1/2 c. heavy cream
- up to 1/4 c. brandy or flavored liqueur, depending on strength and desired flavor, or use small amount of extract
Outer coating (mix & match any of the following)
- Crushed peanuts
- Cocoa powder
- Melted or tempered chocolate; semi-sweet, bittersweet or dark
- Coconut flakes
- Powdered sugar
Directions
- Chop the chocolate and the butter into small pieces and place in a large bowl.
- Bring cream to a boil then immediately add it to the chocolate and butter, stirring until all the chocolate and butter are completely melted.
- Add your desired flavoring, i.e. liqueur or extract and stir well.
- Pour the ganache into an ungreased, wide, flat pan and refrigerate until firm, around 1 hour.
- One at a time, using a melon baller, spoon or any other usable utensil, shape the chilled ganache into desired shape then apply the outer coating. See "Coating" below.
- Allow coated chocolate truffles to rest in a cool, dry place for at least one hour before placing in an airtight container for storage in the refrigerator.
- Allow the chocolate truffles to reach room temperature prior to eating for best texture. Enjoy!
Coating
If not using melted chocolate:
- Simply add shaped ganache to powdered sugar or cocoa powder, rolling to fully coat.
If using melted or tempered chocolate:
- While melting, you should try to keep the temperature of the chocolate under 94°F for optimum final texture, over-heating will cause the chocolate to lose its crispiness after cooling.
- Dip the formed ganache into the melted chocolate and allow to drain a bit, but not cool too much, before placing into bowl of dried outer coating, i.e. nuts, coconut, etc...
- Fully cover ganache balls then leave them in the outer coating bowl for about 15 seconds before removing and placing on wax paper.
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