For those of you who I haven't been babbling to about this already, I'm in a show called The Fordham Follies. What you've got here is your basic show where we mock the law school experience at Fordham through song and skits. It's a blast to do, and from what I hear, pretty fun to see as well. (Come! March 26/27 in Pope Auditorium at Fordham, Lincoln Center Campus.)
We have a rehearsal for Follies today, so I thought it would be nice to bring everyone who has to be there some homemade candy. So that's what I spent yesterday doing, which also allowed me to try another new recipe from my collection! This one comes from Chocolate Bliss, which is only partially a cookbook- it has about 16 different chocolate recipes in it that come on these little cards, but also comes with a music CD, which I should still check out. My friend at work gave it to me as a Christmas present a few years back, and I am ashamed to say that this is the first time I've used a recipe. The one I used was Caramel Chocolate Truffles.
Now, what I can say is that my roommate says they're fantastic. But it was no thanks to that recipe, which was about as convoluted as a recipe for truffles can be. The basic recipe for any truffle is: melt chocolate, stir in cream and flavoring, cool, roll into balls, coat in some way. The issue with these one came with the caramel part of the instructions. I have never made caramels before, but I do know that there are two different ways to make them- one which makes them hard, and one which makes them soft. This one made them crazy. Basically, when I added the cream to the caramel (sugar mixture), it seized up, and became this weird hard caramel stringy structure that I then had to melt back into the cream which took about an hour, in order to make what I presume are the soft type of caramels. My assumption is that if the cream had been warmed, then the caramel wouldn't have seized up. If I do these again, I'll try that theory out. The second part is that it tells you to refrigerate it until they can be rolled into balls. With most truffles I've made, that means a couple hours at least. With this, it means, 10 minutes maybe. But of course, as I was expecting these to work like regular truffles, I had left them in over night, and had to warm the mixture up for about a thousand hours before I could roll them into balls. But whatever, they came out delicious, and that's the important part. Here's the recipe:
Caramel Chocolate Truffles
12 oz. dark chocolate, chopped, plus 6 oz., melted
3 Tbsp. sugar
1 Tbsp. water
1/3 c. heavy cream
1/2 tsp. fleur de sel sea salt
Unsweetened cocoa powder (this is supposed to keep your hands from sticking when you're rolling- if the chocolate is a little extra hard like mine was, you don't need it)
1. In a double boiler over simmering water, melt the 12 oz chocolate, or melt in a microwave on medium.
2. In a small, heavy saucepan over high heat, bring the sugar and water to a boil and cool until golden brown, about 5 minutes. Immediately remove from heat and carefully stir in the cream; the mixture will splatter. (and seize up! You forgot to mention that, people!!! You also forgot to mention "after it seizes up, stir it for hours and hours to melt it again)
3. Stir the melted chocolate and the 1/2 tsp. sea salt into the caramel. (oh- I also put in the sea salt with the cream, so the salt would melt evenly throughout the caramel- that's just a taste thing) Cover and refrigerate until firm enough to roll in to balls.
4. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or aluminum foil. Using a teaspoon or small cookie scoop, scoop out balls of the chocolate mixture; coat your palms with cocoa powder and roll into balls. (at this point, I put them back into the fridge to harden up some more, so they wouldn't melt into the dipping chocolate.)
5. Skewer a truffle and dip it in the melted chocolate; let the excess drip off. Transfer to the prepared pan and sprinkle with seas salt. and let them set at room temperature. Cover and refrigerated, truffles keep for up to 1 week. Bring up to room temperature before serving.
So I made those, but actually made boxes that included 4 candies- one of these, one chocolate covered marshmallow (tip: if dipping in chocolate, stick the marshmallows in freezer for a while first so they don't melt into the chocolate), one oreo truffle that I shaped into a heart, and one orange chocolate truffle (this are REALLY messy- even after being frozen for a few hours, they were still really liquidy, and the butter separated out of the mixture. The flavor is great though- I would suggest that if you have chocolate molds, you use this as a filling for some chocolates). My roommate tested them all and said they all tasted really professional. That's nice to hear! I had some little boxes left over from when I had made truffles for Christmas a number of years ago, so I made them up, with a little written explanation of what was inside, and am about to head over to hand them out. Yippee! Let's hope everyone at rehearsal likes them :)
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