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In December 1990 Mike made chocolate truffles and gave them to friends at Christmas. This became an annual tradition, with the quantity increasing each year. By 2018 we were up to 150 truffles, and have made about that many every year since.
Here are the ingredients for 150 truffles:
These photos show how we make them.
Measure the ingredients.
Often we chop solid 5-pound blocks of chocolate into smaller chunks, and several of those chunks are buried under the pile of chocolate wafers that melt faster.
Warm the cream and melt the butter into it. Melt the chocolate.
We must be very careful when melting the chocolate. Too hot, and it "curdles," forming solids that carry over to the finished truffles. Mike used our induction cooktop on the lowest setting, and stirred the chocolate continuously.
Mix the cream/butter into the melted chocolate to make the "ganache."
For velvety-smooth truffles, both ingredients' temperature must be 95° before mixing. Pouring the cream/butter into the chocolate can cause the chocolate to coalesce, so it must be stirred continuously until the two blend smoothly – often five minutes or more.
The light streaks in this photo are the cream/butter. They disappear once the mixture has been stirred sufficiently.
Prepare the flavor bowls.
A soup bowl holds enough ganache for about 30 truffles. Here are two bowls with raspberry flavor oil, and two with orange. Just one dram (⅛ fluid ounce) of oil is all that's needed for 30 truffles.
Mike discovered a dram bottle of Ameretto flavor oil after this photo was snapped, and poured it into a fifth bowl.
Ladle the ganache into the flavor bowls.
The flavor oil doesn't mix readily with the ganache, but pools around the edge of the bowl. Consequently, each bowl must be stirred for a minute or two to thoroughly mix the oil.
Specialized Tools.
We use these two tools when rolling truffles. The truffle scoop is like a miniature ice cream scoop that makes it easy for Louise to get just enough chilled ganache from a bowl to make one truffle. Mike uses the wire loop to transfer rolled truffles from one place to another.
Roll the truffle balls.
We don't have a photo of this step because it's messy and requires both of us – no extra hands for a camera.
First the ganache must be chilled for at least 12 hours, then each bowl must be put into the freezer for 30 minutes just before rolling to become very firm. Louise digs out a glob of ganache with the truffle scoop and places it on a plate.
Mike hand-rolls the glob into a ball, then drops it into a large cup of cocoa powder. When there are three balls, he swirls the cup to distribute the cocoa over the truffles. Next he extracts each one with the wire loop, and places it into a paper candy cup on a cookie sheet, then goes back to rolling the next three globs Louise has scooped out.
Box the truffles.
The final step is to place the truffles in boxes to be given to friends. Each box holds six or seven truffles. Here, we're about half-done boxing.
Yum!